This Mom Uncovered What’s Really Hiding on Teens’ Phones in a New Documentary & It Changed Her Mind on Social Media
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After not knowing what her 14-year-old son was doing on his phone, Lauren Greenfield decided it was her mission to find out. The Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker explored the digital lives of 25 teenagers, screen recording their phones and conducting interviews about life behind the screen, and what she found shocked her. The riveting new documentary series Social Studies is the result, and it’s a must-see (although slightly terrifying) watch for parents of teens and tweens.
This five-part FX documentary, available on Hulu, looks at a diverse groups of LA teens and how they use their smartphones, which was filmed during the 2021-2022 school year. Issues explored include bullying, unrealistic beauty standards, racism, sex, and peer pressure as these teens come of age online. Greenfield’s camera catches teens sneaking out of bedroom windows, posting sexually explicit images, tracking their long fasting times, and more, per The Guardian. At one point, she even caught her own teen at a party where she was filming someone else.
“We had constant battles about screen time,” Greenfield told The Guardian about her inspiration for this series. “I never could control his access or see the content on his phone. He was super private about his phone, which is probably why I was so obsessed with getting into phones and really seeing what was in there.”
After 1,000 hours of documentary footage and 2,000 hours of screen-recorded content, Greenfield learned a lot about teens’ relationship with social media. “I was blaming my son for his screen time,” she told the outlet. “And I ended up feeling that’s like blaming an opium addict for their addiction. Social media is made to be addictive – purposefully, for maximum engagement, and without any concern for the consequences.” She added that this documentary “brought me together with my teenager.”
Screen Time Addiction
A study published in JAMA this month found that screen time addiction was linked to internal and external symptoms of mental health problems, like anxiety, depression, rule breaking, aggression, and suicidal behaviors. “[Young people] find a craving for it and cannot stop using it,” Yunyu Xiao, lead study author and assistant professor in the department of population health sciences and department of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said in a statement.
The study found approximately 50% of young people were on a “high trajectory of addictive use” for mobile phones, and those students were two to three times more likely to engage in suicidal behavior and suicidal ideation than kids on a lower trajectory.
With the allure of fame and fortune — one girl in the documentary said, “I would release a sex tape if it made me viral” — plus the addictive nature of social media apps like TikTok, it’s no wonder teens are having a hard time turning off their phones.
Greenfield told The Guardian, “I feel it’s a trap to blame the parents. Really, the tech companies could make this completely different if they wanted to. These [apps] are made by humans, engineered to do exactly what they’re doing. They know so well what kids love, what will addict kids, they even know brain science, which I think used to be unethical – to use brain science in the creation of products for young people.”
Phone-Free Alternatives
Psychologist Yoni Schwab, co-founder of the Shefa School and former psychologist at the Windward School, previously told SheKnows that one thing parents can do is encourage alternative activities for their kids. (Grandma hobbies, like knitting, reading, and crafting, might be a good place to start!)
“The key is not just to take away screens,” he told us. “but to replace them with meaningful, engaging, empowering alternatives.” Dr. Schwab added, “When kids are engaged in activities, both structured and unstructured, they are actually much happier than when they are on a device.”
The Fast Forward filmmaker believes that this documentary is important for parents to see what their teens are really up to. “The access we got to the phones was a really important part of the series creatively, narratively, substantively. Just to understand what [social media] is and how it affects teens, we have to see it and read it and watch it,” Greenfield told The New Yorker.
“This is a story that people haven’t seen before, and it’s a story that needed to be told, and it was important for the kids to tell it, too,” she added. “They participated with a sense of purpose.”
If you need more resources to help your teen, Greenfield partnered with Annenberg Learner to create a complementary guide to Social Studies to provide resources for growing up in the digital age, dealing with social media addiction, and more.
Before you go, check out these celebrities who have shared their technology rules for their kids.