Name: Most Powerful Women Summit 2024: Social (Media) Studies - A Conversation With Emmy Award-Winning Documentarian Lauren Greenfield
Uploaded: 2024-10-15
Duration: 15 min 30 s
Description: Lauren Greenfield, Emmy Award-winning Filmmaker Interviewer: Maryam Banikarim, Fortune

Lauren Greenfield, Emmy Award-winning Filmmaker Interviewer: Maryam Banikarim, Fortune

Most Powerful Women Summit 2024: Social (Media) Studies - A Conversation With Emmy Award-Winning Documentarian Lauren Greenfield

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Social (Media) Studies - A Conversation With Emmy Award-Winning Documentarian Lauren Greenfield

Let's turn our attention to a topic that is really already playing a role in shaping the next generation of leaders. And that is social media and how it impacts our brains, our happiness and our lives. More generally. The Emmy Award winning filmmaker Lauren Greenfield explores social media's influence on teens in particular in her New Doctors series, which is called Social Studies. It offers a really intimate look at a diverse group of L A high schoolers revealing how social media shapes their lives from really joyful moments to quite harrowing consequences. Marian Bacarri will talk with Lauren in just a moment. But first, we've got a glimpse of the series for you to watch. Social media is kind of like the only way to communicate. It's the only way you go connected to anyone. I could be myself. I need a perfect body. I can't get rid of it. She was bullied and if you want to beat up somebody, it it becomes everything how you going to do this. I hope to document the first generation that had grown up with social media their entire lives. Teenagers from Los Angeles agreed to share their private accounts and their digital experiences. School is starting how many of you were asked to send a nude of yourself? If you put out content like Kim Kardashian did, maybe you'll get famous. My social media consumption 12 hours a day, you edit your body to be something. It's not one of the major beauty centers is you kind of have to be Caucasian. People would just call you the N word. So I took action and they took my whole account down. It's frightening to see how sexualized some of these images are. I sort of don't want to look at my kid's Tik Tok. Go the more time I spend on social media, the more anxious I feel it is so scary that we are allowed to actually do this. Social media has a role in everything, doesn't it, it's hard to figure out what you want, but you know what social media is telling you to want. There was so much hate. It did affect me a lot. Social media took a toll on me, but I'm not alone in this. It's up to us to figure out how we can still be people. OK? Hello, everyone. Just remember that we're going to take questions. So I'll start the interview, but this is when you should be thinking about your questions and the mic will be brought to you if you raise your hand. So Lauren, you worked on this project for two years, 1200 hours of footage 2000 hours of screen time. You were trying to explore what it was like for kids who grew up with a smartphone in their hand. What surprised you the most about this project? Oh my gosh. A lot of surprises. I mean, I have been looking at youth culture for 30 years. My first book, Fast Forward, Growing Up in the shadow of Hollywood, looked at some of the similar things, the influence of fame, look, the influence of materialism, um the importance of image and what I saw was just everything amplified to the nth degree that a big part of childhood now is about getting fame, getting likes doing branding, cultivating an image. I think the early loss of innocence, which was also something I looked at 30 years ago. But then just looking at how media was impacting like cable TV and movies and music, which seems pretty benign. Now, now the loss of innocence comes when one gets their smartphone and basically the whole world is kind of coming at them. You told me that when you started, you had a 14 year old son and a 20 year old son and you were pride and how there was a difference between a 14 year old's experience and a 20 year old's experience. What does that mean? Yeah, that was like really an inspiration for going back and looking at this thing because I saw that my 14 year old was a different generation than my 20 year old, that my 20 year old used social media to talk to friends a little bit, but he was really a reader. And my youngest, we had constant battles about screen time. He gets all his news from tiktok and I saw that it was an addiction. Well, I also saw him getting depressed from it during COVID when screen time increased. So I really wanted to look at what is the thing that they're looking at. And the unique part about the series is that the kids gave us access to their phones. And so we see that all of that content in real time and it's all in the kids' point of view, teenager's point of view. There are no experts, they're the experts. You not only got access to the kids and their digital habits, not just their social habits, you also got access to parents. How were you able to get them to open up to you in the way that you did because they're pretty open? I mean, I actually didn't start thinking the parents would be a part of it at all. I thought it would be more like Charlie Brown where we just kind of see them in the background. Um But I think first of all, I came into this as a parent not knowing that much. And what I saw that was so shocking was how caring loving parents are completely clueless about what's going on often. Right next to them. And so I think clueless about what about this social media life, which I think is the biggest cultural influence on young people's lives, like, bigger than parents, bigger than school than peers. And it's like a black hole where parents don't know what's going on. You talk a lot about sort of social media and comparison culture. And I thought that was a really interesting insight into what's driving a lot of the anxiety. What does that mean? Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's so toxic is the constant comparison and teenagers have always dealt with insecurities. Am I popular? Can I be in the popular group? Do kids like me comparing against other kids in their friend group against a popular group against the kids in the school? Now, young people are comparing themselves against every peer in the world and often those peers are face tuned, photoshopped, manufactured, not real. So when it comes and it's not just beauty, although beauty and body image was a huge thing, but also college pressure also um all kinds of um comparisons. It's constant, even one of the surprising things was that mental illness in addition to exploding is also a trend. Well, actually you actually talked about um suicidal ideation and how there was a reddit that um told you how to commit suicide. What, what was that all about? This is a little bit of a spoiler for episode five. But yeah, I mean, I think what the algorithm does is it takes you it kind of and the, and the teenagers are very aware of this. It kind of exploits your most um private and delicate vulnerabilities. So it takes you by the hand and shows you how to do things and sometimes that can be how to have a good eating disorder, how to be sicker, how to take action on suicidal thoughts, kind of the worst things that we can imagine it will take you there. So it's five episodes, I highly recommend watching it because you know, it is a world we don't live in the same way. In episode five. Jonathan says social media is our lifeline, but it's also a loaded gun. I think it's hard sometimes for parents or adults to understand what we're going through, even though they care what role can parents play since it really isn't the world in which we grew up. I mean, I think the first thing is parents need to know what's going on. I hope parents watch the series, watch it with your teenagers. We did an educational curriculum, we did a parent guide to spark conversation. Sometimes I hear from parents what Danny says in the trailer, which is, I almost don't want to know. Actually, we really need to know and I think teenagers are really relieved at parents and adults knowing and I think that's why they kind of divulge their most private lives in this show so that people would know. So I think there's actually a lot that parents can do, but I also don't think it's fair to have it be on parents or on kids. I feel like I got into the battle with my son about screen time. I feel like that's the first thing we go to is kind of blaming the victims. These, these apps are made to be addictive. We would not treat opiate addiction this way. And so to have it fall so squarely on the individual I think does not work. We need collective action, both in schools, parent groups, regulation, corporate responsibility, all of it. Uh There was another quote that struck me. One of the girls said we're not doing well but we can't get off. So it sort of goes to the addiction point that you're making. Yeah, I mean, I think that Lifeline loaded gun is so important because it's part of growing up today. I mean, the show in a way is less about it. It's not an issue film about social media. It's really about coming of age in the time of social media. It's also entertaining because the kids are so great. I don't, I don't wanna scare you from watching it, but I think that what we see is that it's part and parcel of social life and that's really important to teenagers too. So it's not a binary like get rid of social media or keep it. It's the genie is out of the bottle, it's here, but it doesn't have to be the way it currently is. Ok. So I'm going to see if there's any questions. So if there is a question, please let us know, what do you think the role of regulation is in this equation? I mean, every other media is regulated and it, it's just kind of shocking that this one is not and that also the tech companies have no responsibility for it. So I think regulation is important. Um But I also think that the engineering can be different. I was just watching the movie about Jim Henson and at the beginning of the children's television workshop, when they brought on Jim Henson, they, the idea was to bring together people who know what kids love with people who know what kids need to learn. And that second piece was never there with tech and it's always just been give kids what will create maximum engagement, maximum advertising, even if we know it's not in the best interest of young people, so growth at any cost. Ok. We have a question. Hi, I'm Laura Heisman. I have a 15 year old daughter. Um And this like my body is shaking right now because it hits me so hard. And my question is with the kids that you spoke to. How, what can I learn from that about how to talk to my daughter? So she'll share more about what's going on on Instagram and tiktok. I mean, I'm in marketing. I know what's going on in that, but I don't know what's going on enough. And I'm thankful when she opens up, but it's not enough. And I'm wondering if you learned anything from those conversations that can help me connect more with her. Thank you for your question. And I really appreciate your emotion. Um I think that knowing what's going on is actually a huge relief to young people. We premiered this show in Telluride Film Festival. And afterwards a 20 something and her mother came up to me and the 20 something said it was really uncomfortable watching this with my mother because she knows nothing about my life. But I'm really glad she does now. And I found that too. Like when I, we have, there's one episode four which is about sexuality and how kids learn about that. And one of the main educators is pornography and one trend that really shocked me was B DS M and choking as a trend with teenagers and hearing this from, we, we have a kind of focus group in the show where there's peer to peer conversations so that we can see if a problem is unique to one person or common. And really we only include in the show, the universal issues. And when I heard so many teenagers talking about this jaw dropping trend, I went home and I asked my boys like is this real? And they validated this, she means is the choking thing real and they validated it. And so I think, and I feel like it was a relief for them to talk about it because it's uncomfortable. And I think that that's why we did this parent guide because I think having conversations is so important. And also at school, like one of the reasons we did this kind of round table discussion is the teenagers so wanted to talk about it and so wanted to know that they were not alone. Almost every teenager in the project said if they had a choice, they would rather be in their parents' generation before the phone. So 22 million Americans are aged 15 to 19, they could be your kids, your employees, your consumers. What do you think we need to understand to really bridge this divide beyond sort of like reading the parent guide. I mean, I think we need to address what is a massive mental health issue which has kind of been under the radar. Um I mean, the therapists that we've showed it to have started to cry like there are not even enough therapists. So I think it's an urgent issue that we need to deal with. I feel like for this generation, the important thing is finding out about it. For the next generation. I think there is movement towards change. It's entirely possible and I hope that that happens. OK. So, unfortunately, I know you're gonna have a lot of questions and actually, that's one of the reasons Lauren's staying for dinner. So I hope you find her because we've definitely been um given the, we're done with time. Thank you, Lauren. And I have one thing I just wanna say we do need your help. This is an incredible room of marketing professionals and young people don't watch Hulu and FX. Um they watch Tik Tok and so we need your help in spreading the word in doing a digital advertising campaign in getting the curriculum into every school in America and in really facing this issue, Sasha is here. So listen, I want you to find Lauren. I want you to watch the five part episode. It really is the beginning. It's, it's, it's still rolling out now and it's on Hulu and N FX. Yes. Really good question. Common sense media recommends 14 plus and gave it their highest approval.