The dawn of a new era was marked by MySpace’s pioneering spirit and Facebook’s subsequent impact. As we navigate the digital realm, we find ourselves entwined in an intricate dance between connection and isolation – where the very fabric of online life poses both a solace and a source of torment. Significant changes have been made to quite a lot since its humble beginnings. In June, Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek H. Murthy, Murthy warns that social platforms with a history of contributing to the youth mental health crisis, where “social media has been identified as a key factor,” are now required to display a warning label. The new FX docuseries from documentarian Lauren Greenfield brings these unsettling consequences into sharp focus.
The thesis was easy. As a natural progression, Greenfield delved into the core technologies that made social media an integral and expected aspect of our daily lives. Between August 2021 and summer 2022, she immersed herself among a group of teenagers at several Los Angeles-area high schools for an entire school year, primarily at Palisades Charter High School, where they fixated on crushes, applied to college, attended prom, and chased their individual passions.
As a seasoned documentarian behind landmark series such as and, Greenfield reflects on the unconventional journey that brought this film to fruition. “The children were co-investigators on this journey.” The team, led by Greenfield, amassed a staggering 1,200 hours of primary images, while college students were also asked to record their daily phone usage, yielding an additional 2,000 hours of footage. Assembled into a cohesive narrative, the documentary sheds light on the complex and relentless struggles faced by adolescents grappling with physique dysmorphia, bullying, societal pressures, and suicidal thoughts. “That’s the most innovative aspect of this challenge, since we’ve never witnessed anything like it before.”
What profundity arises from Greenfield’s exhaustive methodology in this five-episode sequence! The results may likely yield the most accurate and comprehensive depiction of Generation Z’s connection to social media. As the final episode of the series airs this week, I had the opportunity to speak with Greenfield via Zoom about the relentless and seemingly boundless challenges of being a young person online today?.
What are your thoughts on this ambiguous statement? As part of a deliberate social experiment, I ventured in. This is the fundamental technology that has never developed without it. Despite being around for a while, social media remains the primary technology of choice for digital natives. It seemed an opportune moment to examine the long-term effects of this phenomenon on childhood. As a result of this technology’s rapid ascent, it has become a profound cultural influence, surpassing even the significance of family ties, social connections, and educational institutions – an impact amplified by the pandemic, which coincided with our filming period. While embarking on this filmmaking project without a predetermined stance or activism in mind, I found myself deeply impacted by the poignant stories shared with me by the young people involved. Their candid revelations painted a stark and unsettling picture of their daily realities, underscoring the gravity of the situation.
