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Good morning. This week an inquest will be held into the death of Mollie Russell, the 14 year-old found dead in her bedroom in November 2017, after apparently viewing images relating to depression and self-harm. Her father Ian has shown an impressive dignity as he has tried to trace Mollie’s deteriorating mental state, looking up some of sites she had already visited on the family computer. He found she had followed tags including words like ‘lonely’ or ‘depressed’ which led to her being sent imagery of cutting, bruising and taking pills. Thanks to his research some of these were shown on television, images which most of us have never encountered; romantically curated invitations to self-harm. All too fascinating for anyone who has ever felt misunderstood or afraid of their own thoughts. Mollie left notes saying how she felt like a small boat lost in a storm. The clear message she was getting was that oblivion was the answer to the intractable pain of life. It is surely right now that the social media giants should be challenged over the way they operate. The Health Secretary Matt Hancock has already done this, insisting that they take more responsibility for their content. And Sir Nick Clegg for Facebook thinks change likely. But Mollie’s death raises another issue, a theological issue if you like. Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest work on algorithms; once you show an interest in a topic you find yourself being offered more of the same. We all know this – look for something online and for the next few weeks you’ll be plagued by pop up ads with variations on the theme. There is no human being watching you and sending you this stuff. It just happens because this is the way these systems are designed to work. The command that pumped harmful imagery towards Mollie was not conscious, it had no interest in life or death, good or evil. It is an ancient insight of Christian thought that while people relate to each other face to face, the devil has no face. Images of Old Nick as a slightly comic creature with horns are benign travesties. Real evil not is not only faceless, it has no rational centre and no heart. It is as St Augustine insisted, empty of any real being. But it still replicates itself like a virus, feeding off the vulnerability that comes with genuine life. I don’t think social media is evil in itself, nor do I think the Facebook boss was being insincere when he expressed his sadness at Mollie’s death. But I do think - as some of those from Silicon Valley have suggested - that we have created something bad that we do not quite understand. It is not enough to ‘do no evil’ as in Google’s’ one time motto. Evil must be exposed even exorcised, and the will to do that can only come from all of us.