It is a grim portrait straight from the streets of broken Britain: a teenage girl filmed allegedly brandishing a knife and an axe in Dundee last Saturday amid unsubstantiated rumours on social media that she was fending off an approach from migrants.
The footage comes from Lochee, one of the most poverty-ridden areas not only in the city known for jute, jam and journalism, but in the whole of Scotland. Even by the standards of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation – a report card on poverty, health inequalities and crime – the situation in this community is harrowing.
Six in ten of Lochee’s children live in the top five per cent most-deprived neighbourhoods in the country. Health and education outcomes are among the worst in Scotland. It is the definition of a community left behind and forgotten.
Police in the city say a 14-year-old girl has been arrested and the matter is now in the hands of the justice system.
The backdrop to this troubling incident is a town in which social ills including family breakdown, worklessness and crime have been allowed to fester for far too long. Like much of Dundee, Lochee has been failed by generations of politicians.
There is plenty of shame to be felt – and plenty of officials past and present who ought to be feeling it.
Public alarm about the girl’s plight is thoroughly understandable, not least concerns about her personal safety during the events depicted in the video currently being circulated. It is a natural response to seeing a child in apparent distress. A cursory glance through the headlines on any given day will confirm why this is so.
But the way in which a disturbing episode in a young girl’s life has been turned into a social media storm ought to prompt some solemn soul-searching.
Police in the city say a 14-year-old girl has been arrested and the matter is now in the hands of the justice system
Lochee is one of the most poverty-ridden areas not only in Dundee but the whole of Scotland
Smartphones are a reality of everyday life, including and perhaps especially for young people, and this means a great deal is filmed that would previously have gone unremarked upon.
This can be a good thing in certain instances. Young people will often pull out their phones and hit ‘record’ as an insurance policy whenever they feel unsafe. But the nature of social media is such that footage shot on the spur of the moment on the streets of Dundee can quickly go viral and be seen by millions across the globe.
By tweeting about the Lochee video, SpaceX tycoon Elon Musk has poured rocket fuel on to an already tense situation, one in which he cannot possibly know all of the facts. Quite how this helps the girl in question is anyone’s guess.
Parading her across the wild west of X and other social media platforms, where she is now featuring in clips, memes and online political battles, is not to this girl’s benefit.
It is cynical and reckless, turning her anguish into morbid entertainment for countless users who know nothing about the child or her circumstances. It is social voyeurism.
If this teenager requires help, she will not receive it from strangers gawping at her torment like the digital equivalent of those rubber-necking wretches who slow down while passing car accidents.
The safety and wellbeing of the girl should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind, not conscripting her into the latest skirmish in the culture war.
When social despair and a child’s distress become viral content, something has gone very wrong in Britain.
