“You should watch this documentary if you want to understand, but I won’t be watching it with you”. These were the words from one of my closest friends who with inexplicable pain lost his daughter to suicide five years ago.

I watched the film on Channel 4, and now write about it, because it is too important not to. It is tough, but essential viewing. Essential not only for the millions of parents across the world, but for all of us to understand the scourge that is social media. As a political commentator said this week, in twenty years time we will ‘wake up’ to realise that we have all been part of a social experiment that has not worked, and ( my words) has changed the course of human history and evolution. Deep down we all know that it is bad for us, but we don’t stop ourselves. It is also eroding the very foundations of our society. We know this too, feeling the structure of it is ebbing away, yet we feel powerless to do anything.

In essence the film is about Molly a normal fourteen year old British girl who took her own life during a time of low self esteem. The inference though in the film is that social media was a catalyst to her depression and enabler to her taking her own life.

Why this is such a powerful film is that most of the words come from the father and Molly’s girlfriends. Words spoken with strength and little play to your heartstrings. This is simply not needed. Then there is the court hearing. Scenes played out between a judge, family lawyer and a representative from META. The bottom line is that harmful content is out there, easily accessible to young people and, META is aware but don’t do enough (some would say nothing) to stop it. Putting economic gain in front of the health and lives of our children.

The Guardian review of the film, although highly complimentary, criticises the techy approach to the film as insensitive considering the content, but for me this was it’s brilliance. Molly’s bedroom – portrayed as a futuristic box where any device in the room containing a microchip is listening, watching and mining data about her – is a metaphor for the controlling ‘machine’. The techy bedroom unsettles you, not the normal sanctuary of clothes and cuddly toys, but a closed lair where a high tech digital monster lurks in all the dark corners. Molly’s father comments that once the front door is bolted at night you think your children are safe. When infact Molly had connection to the outside world through her mobile phone. A world sending her images confirming her fears that she wasn’t good enough and ultimately she should end her life to put everyone, herself, friends and family ‘out of their misery’.

Social Media was initially intended to only link family and friends together. But what we have created is a mega beast of followers, likes, data, selling platforms and incessant scrolling. Now parents all over the world battle with buying the latest phone, at what age, levels of parental control, in the classroom or not, children ‘left behind’, ostracised. Oh my, a minefield.

What I do know – and now more than ever with the power of AI – that no harmful content should be visible to young people. Yes, there are questions of what is harmful? What age is young? But let’s put a smart group of parents together from across the world and let them decide, rather than leaving these decisions to the monolithic commercial companies.

When the CEOs of the big tech companies were asked what age they would allow their children access to mobile phones there answers were this: Sam Altman CEO Google, “ late end of reasonable” ; Mark Zuckerberg CEO Meta, no specific age but controlled screen time ; Elon Musk CEO of everything, “ I made big mistakes”. They know only too well.

B ❤️