Like many baby boomers, the concerned mother/doctor at the heart of this disturbing documentary didn't grow up with her own phone (she just used the family's), watched little TV, and had scant contact with video games.
Her kids' generation is different. "It's addicting, but there's no downside," opines her teenage daughter. "I think we're overthinking it." And yet the son in the family got so heavily into video games that he attended an Internet-addiction rehab in Washington State. "If I had dedicated all my computer time" to more productive activities, he said, "I'd be way ahead of where I am now."
And how! Tons of time goes into these electronic pursuits, be they social-media interactions on smartphones or video games. We learn here about the developers of digital distractions, and how they design products in ways that prey on young people's zest for novelty and excitement at a time in their lives when they may be unsupervised, and not well-equipped to resist distraction and impulsivity. All of this transpires at a time when research shows success is predicted more by an ability to delay gratification than intelligence.
Due to digital products' ability to elicit pleasure-seeking brain chemicals, kids are becoming as reliant on their screens as drug users and gamblers on their toxic substances and behaviors.
Both boys and girls in this story laud their ability to multitask by using multiple screens simultaneously. In so doing, we're told, "You feel you're doing better and better, but you're doing worse." Based on experiments on mice, it's believed such behaviors can permanently damage neurons.
A major problem with a digital world is that kids will connect with their screens to the exclusion of other things. This film introduces teens at a school who are fiddling with their phones rather than interacting face-to-face. "I would look cool" having a smartphone, one girl explains. "I would be able to look busy in awkward situations."
We're told that boys play 11.3 hours of video games a week. (As the mother of a 17-year-old boy, I'm guessing that number is way low.) We view a couple scenes from violent games -- i.e., watching a woman who is pushed to the ground and kicked -- while pondering whether such fare increases aggression in its players. (One dad interviewed in this film pooh-poohs this notion, likening today's digital pursuits to "war games in the neighborhood" when he was growing up. However, with old-school street games, kids interacted directly with peers and got physical exercise).
It's noted here that most school shooters had been heavily immersed in video games. The film cites a positive correlation between violent games and aggressive thoughts and behaviors, while showing drops in empathy. That's really troubling.
This film also reports that the average teen spends 6.5 hours a day engaging with screens of some sort -- not including time spent on homework. (Try withholding your child's laptop as punishment for something, and he'll likely tell you he needs it for his homework. As one kid in the movie jokes, it's extremely easy to outwit an adult.)
We also learn here that the designers of digital entertainment know all about the brain and how to trigger the release of pleasure-producing chemicals. Many video games are built so as to encourage this rush of neurotransmitters, much in the way that drugs operate.
So what's the answer? The movie isn't strong on that question. Present times are described as a "Wild West" in which regulators are far behind the geniuses of technological development, who know how to produce electronic razzle-dazzle to hook our kids.
Along the way, we meet an older caregiver raising a grandson whom she noticed was spending too much time with screens and getting aggressive when limits were placed. A counselor advised her to use screen time as an incentive or reward, withholding it as a negative consequence.
"If you stay firm and consistent, they will follow your lead," the grandma is encouraged. And, sure enough, we see later scenes of the young man otherwise occupying himself, i.e., learning to raise reptiles as pets. However, we don't find out if such diversions are long-lasting or how device use evolves as a young person gets older and more strenuously resists parental control.
While the boys in this film are hung up on games, the girls seem obsessed with taking selfies in sexy postures, always trying to find a middle ground between cutesy and prostitute-like. We see the negative potential here in a segment about a teen who sent a suggestive photo to a male who'd requested it -- only to circulate the pic and shame the young woman. I sympathized with this brave young lady for sharing her cautionary tale.
I am auditing a class in the horror film at my local college. However, I found much in this film to out-scare me. One shudders to think where the future may lead.
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