Does speculation over Jay Slater Tenerife disappearance show nothing has been learned from Nicola Bulley case?

When three-year-old Madeleine McCann went missing in 2007, social media was really in its infancy.

Facebook existed, but was used by only a fairly small number of people, having only recently opened up to those outside of the US university community. Instagram was three years away from conception, while TikTok was not even a twinkle in its founders’ eyes.

Instead, the family relied on the mainstream press and broadcast media to report their story, encouraging witnesses to come forward and to piece together information about the child’s disappearance.

Some media reported responsibly. Other outlets - mainly tabloids - delved into more outlandish theories and details of the family’s background, which caused distress and harm. Over the coming months and even years, amateur sleuths used these stories to gossip over office water coolers about details such as whether Madeleine’s window was open or closed; the distance from the apartment to the restaurant where her parents were eating; and whether the boot of their hire car had been cleaned before or after Madeleine disappeared.

This was all bad enough.

Almost 20 years on and the world is a very different place. Every new detail of a disappearance is reported on and ripped apart by not only the media, but publicly by every man and his dog with an internet connection.

On Wednesday, the family of teenager Jay Slater, who went missing in Tenerife last week, warned the social media “noise” around his case was distracting from finding him.

A search team member with a search dog close to the village of Masca, Tenerife, where the search for missing British teenager Jay Slater, 19, continues. Picture: James Manning/PA Wire | James Manning/PA Wire

Facebook groups set up to share helpful information with Jay’s family have hundreds of thousands of members. Presumably few of them actually have any useful intelligence to share on the matter. Other groups, focused on wilder, conspiratorial theories on Jay’s disappearance, are equally popular.

Many discussions have been had on sites such as Reddit over whether a call apparently made to his friend, Lucy, who was with him on the island, ever took place. This has been fuelled by notorious conspiracy theorist David Icke, who has claimed “Lucy doesn’t exist”.

Obsessive discussion of other details, about Jay’s background and his mother’s reaction to his disappearance, have also been rife online, as well as theories around his reason for visiting the island.

The fever pitch interest around the case is reminiscent of that of mother-of-two Nicola Bulley, who disappeared early last year whilst walking her dog in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire.

Conspiracy theories abounded over what could have happened to Ms Bulley, 45, ranging from accusations levelled at members of her family, to questions over an abandoned house located nearby - as well as the victim’s own mental health history, which was revealed by police in an unprecedented attempt to dampen down public interest in the case.

Ms Bulley’s body was eventually found further down the river three weeks later. Forensic experts deemed she had died by “accidental drowning”, quashing the outlandish theories circulating on the internet.

The damage, however, will have been done. While arguably too young at the time of her death, Ms Bulley’s two children will undoubtedly search for their mother’s name when they get older and come across the unpleasant theories written about her tragic demise.

The problem lies in crossing the lines between fiction and reality. Murder mystery stories, such as those written by Agatha Christie, have long been popular. Yet, it is an appetite for true crime that allows people to discuss a real-life tragic event as entertainment. Interest in true crime podcasts has exploded in recent years, sparked by US hit Serial, which charted the twists and turns of an overturned murder conviction - and even fictionalised by Disney+ show Only Murders in the Building, where Steve Martin and Selena Gomez are part of an unlikely group of neighbours who bond together over creating a podcast on crimes carried out in their New York block of flats.

Yet for the families involved, their loved ones’ disappearances are not a mystery, they are a living hell. And we all need to remember this before we take to our keyboards to speculate on them.