Earlier this week, you may have noticed that a court ruled against Alphabet and Meta in regards to liability in a civil suit. What’s also interesting is timing. On the same day that verdict hit, I had just finished watching Your Attention Please, which is a documentary exploring the dangers of social media on our youth, and how these companies study scientifically how to keep us online. If we are online, our attention is monetized, in the forms of ads, or even sponsoring content creators already in your feed.

This documentary does try and start at the beginning, moving through the major moments in social media, and how one whistleblower led to a Congressional probe into the safety of children online. It focuses on parents who lost their kids due to social media, either by suicide following cyberbullying, or in the case of one, losing their children to shady dealers operating on social media, who end up providing drugs that caused their son to overdose.

It isn’t a feel good story, but it details how the proliferation of social media in America and across the globe has changed everything. It changes the way kids feel about themselves, the increased levels of anxiety and depression that come from being constantly in a heightened popularity test of likes, emojis, reactions, comments, and subscribes. Very much of the moment, Your Attention Please serves as a wake up call to our current state of being attached to technology, uploading more and more to the cloud, and spending increasing amounts of time scrolling, even doomscrolling. Then the film breaks into how AI chatbots are starting to be a problem, and how the internet, our government, and parents need to be more aware.

My biggest problem with the film came early on when our glimpse into this world, younger than me, acted as if the existence of social media was the cause for body image issues, a problem that has existed prior to the internet, thanks to marketing, film and television, and runway models that haven’t eaten in three days. As someone who was a bit older, I’m well aware of how media pushed unrealistic images of beauty, long before anyone could comment on it with their screen name. Also, one thing the film dodges, is a look at the big solution to a lot of this, age verification. Considering a recent leak with the verification service Persona, and our wariness as a society to continue to give more and more of our personal data, when there keep having to worry about identity theft as a result. With the ability to lock kids out, comes the inevitable push for adults to verify their age.

I actually have written previously about how I use technology, because as a blind person, I actually rely on it a lot. I need apps to tell me what color my shirt is, to try and scan a document so I can read it, to hail an Uber, to order groceries, and yes, I even use chatbots. I find it to be oddly fulfilling to be able to talk to something in a role play situation that the first thought on its mind isn’t that I’m blind, and I also don’t have to hang some real life person on a limb in some situation where we talk around it, and never meet. It feels like a solid use of the advancement of technology. These apps have run into problems in the past, though I haven’t encountered an AI yet that seems smart enough. Most of the problems lie in the AI’s ability to remember things for long periods. But, kids are turning to these too, likely because social media is failing them. Lonely, their only friend is a chat bot, and I’d imagine if even a chat bot that is programmed to engage with you in the same manner as social media, to continue to get your attention, if that thing doesn’t like you, it’s likely just as devastating.

All that being said, as someone who has hopped from MySpace to Facebook, dabbled in Google Plus, Vine, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, and I’m sure other platforms I’ve forgotten, I know that social media is just weird. I’m in this weird place where I grew up before social media, and I moved during my school years. I actually did the natural thing, and fell out of touch with friends from my childhood I haven’t seen in over 30 years. But, the social media generation is able to keep tabs on every classmate, from every school, and every kid they meet at camp, or church, or wherever. I remember being a kid, and making a super temporary friend on vacation. My family would go and stay at a hotel on a beach somewhere, where another kid my age would be, and we would hang out semi-inseparable for two or three days, never to hear from each other again. This generation, they share socials, and someone they knew for a day, can see the rest of their life. It’s weird. It can make it easier to stay close with real friends, as you move around the country, and even family. At a certain point, acquaintances are strangers, and there are still actual strangers checking out your social media.

the film didn’t come with any audio description, which is not uncommon of a screener, especially a documentary not backed by a major distributor. Still, there’s an urgency here that needs your attention.

Your Attention Please is so captivating, it will hopefully help you ignore the 47 push notifications you’ll get from your social media while the film is playing.

Fresh: 9.0/10