Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Today's Mental Health Monday looks at social media through its most enthusiastic users, high school students. In the docu-series titled Social Studies, we meet LA kids who have agreed to share their online lives. Sometimes it's normalish and sometimes it isn't and then sometimes we get a glimpse into their world, even if those of us long past high school don't get it. Let's listen for an example to a moment from Social Studies. It's when a group of kids is asked about going viral for a video and you'll see where the conversation goes.

Speaker 1: Who in here has gone viral? Show of hands. Oh, my gosh. Everybody's gone viral.

Speaker 2: With Kim K, she got famous for the sex tape and so with platforms like TikTok where anybody can get famous, that's-- if you put out content like Kim Kardashian did, maybe you'll get famous. If I could become a multimillionaire with a giant company and be as famous as Kim Kardashian, I would release my sex tape. A sex tape.

Speaker 3: She's all set up now.

Speaker 2: Her whole life is set up. She's super famous. She has millions of dollars. She has her own company so does all of her family.

Speaker 4: Her mom definitely inspired that whole thing.

Alison Stewart: The grown-up voice you hear is that of filmmaker Lauren Greenfield, Variety says of Social Studies, Engrossing and troubling. The docu-series presents a time capsule of today while allowing teens to speak for themselves. You can catch it on FX, and it streams on Hulu. Lauren Greenfield joins us now. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren Greenfield: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, if you want to get on this conversation, what has been your experience with your kids and social media? 212-433-9692. 212-433. You can call us or you can text to us, or you can reach us on social media @allofitwnyc. Simple question, what's been your experience with your kids on social media? 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. Lauren, with every documentary, there's a question that you wanted answered. What was the question that you wanted answered?

Lauren Greenfield: I wanted to find out how social media is affecting this generation. This generation that has literally grown up on it, didn't know a world without it, and I saw it with my own kids as just being a huge influence. What I think is the biggest cultural influence of our time and also where kids are spending the most time.

Alison Stewart: The students in your film start back to school after a year of lockdown during COVID. How did their relationship to social media change?

Lauren Greenfield: I mean, I think COVID amplified their dependence on social media and on devices because it was literally the way they socialized, communicated, learned, but the interesting-- It was a very good time to look at this effect but I think what we saw when they came back is they kept a lot of the same habits. Of course, we know it's very addictive. We hear that from the kids and so the way it was part of their lives persisted and continued once they came back.

In fact, a lot of the things that social media amplified, like the social anxiety, we saw in a really dramatic way when they first came back that contrary to kind of thinking, everybody wanted to come back, that some kids were actually really nervous about coming back. I remember one story where somebody said that their school didn't have good wi-fi, but when they walked down the hallway at school, they looked at their phone as though they were on it because they didn't want to make eye contact with other people.

I think this social anxiety just got amplified during COVID going into coming back.

Alison Stewart: Which social media apps do they favor? There are so many these days.

Lauren Greenfield: Most of the kids were really on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat. I would say those were the three biggest ones.

Alison Stewart: And how did you gather students for your documentary?

Lauren Greenfield: I did a bunch of pre-interviews, almost 200 in the spring of 2020 over Zoom-- or 2021 over Zoom before we began and I started gathering a group that way. I wanted a really diverse group of kids, not just socioeconomically, but also in terms of their relationship with social media. There were young people that had had histories on social media. There were others, like Jonathan who'd never posted and just used it for the news.

It was a very diverse group from all different neighborhoods in LA. I think one of the important things to keep in mind when watching the series is these are not individual or extreme stories. These are extremely universal stories and their discussions, group discussions that go through the series, that's what you just played on the show, where we see kids silent clapping when they hear another story that they relate to.

I think that was really important to see. Whether it was going viral, whether it was the experience of having been sent nudes or being asked to send nudes, there were. Whether it was having an eating disorder or disordered eating, there were questions that I asked that almost everybody in the circle did a silent clap for or raised their hands.

Alison Stewart: You know what's interesting is you got them to agree to have access to their social media. What were the rules? How did you get that response from people? They said, yes, you can have access to our social media.

Lauren Greenfield: I think this was a really key component of the project. I wanted to do a social experiment where we could see how kids were being impacted by this media and in order to do that, we had to understand what the media was. Even as a mother, I would see my kids on this thing all the time, but not really know the specifics. It was a black hole of what they were looking at.

That was a ground rule prerequisite to participate was that while we were filming, we were also going to be capturing the social media in real-time. I think that the young people who participated really did so with a sense of purpose. I think young people are extremely aware and we hear the wisdom and the insightfulness of the participants during this whole project. They're extremely aware of the effects, especially the negative effects of social media, and how that impacts their mental health.

They really wanted a place to talk about it, share about it. They were willing to give up some of their privacy in this world to do that, which I think is a huge gift to us because I think most parents don't understand exactly what's going on in this other world that's a huge, almost as important as the real world in their teenagers lives.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Lauren Greenfield. She's the director of the series Social Studies. You can see it on-- premiered on FX and streams on Hulu. I believe there are five episodes. One and two are available on Hulu now. We're asking you parents, what's your relationship of your kids in social media? 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. Mark is calling in from Huntington Station. Mark, thank you so much for calling. WNYC.

Mark: Thanks for taking the call. I'm looking forward to watching this series. Just my main point is social media, from my perspective, has taken away a lot of childhood and created this hyper monetization, hyper hustle culture of, all I have to do is get viral and my life will be fulfilled. I'm confused by that. I don't like it and I'm hoping that your series will help me process it.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. Did you want to respond, Lauren?

Lauren Greenfield: Yes, I agree with that 100%. I mean, that's what we see in the show. In episode one, we start seeing how important fame is and this-- you call it monetization, but also numbers game of likes and how important that is to kids and how it leads, and we heard this in the clip, to girls, for example, using their sexuality, using their bodies to get likes because as Sydney says in episode one, when she posted pictures of our passion of photography, of photographing sunsets, she didn't get any likes.

Then she started posting pictures of her body, all of a sudden, the likes started rolling in. We see boys like Jack, who's an entrepreneur, throwing parties, or Keshawn, who's a musician, using social media for exactly what the caller mentioned, helping their careers and Keyshawn sees-- they both see it as a very positive thing and I think we see in the show positives and negatives, but there's no question that it is the end of childhood innocence as we knew it.

That really was one of the driving missions for me in coming back to this project because I've been looking at youth culture for 30 years, and my first book was called Fast Forward: Growing up in the Shadow of Hollywood and it was about how these values of Hollywood, which I called the culture of materialism, fame and celebrity and image, and how these were affecting kids and now with social media, we see this completely amplified to the nth degree.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Some of the kids, they see it as a way out. Let's take Keyshawn, for example. You mentioned he and his girlfriend are growing their social media, they're following as a couple. Here's a clip from the series Social Studies.

Keyshawn: Me and Amari have been dating a year now, about to be two. We're popular on TikTok. It's all about the sound you use.

Speaker 5: When we popped out as a couple, a lot of people shared it. They sent it to other people, their followers say, you guys are always so goofy and comfortable with each other. I want a relationship like that.

Keyshawn: If it's funny, people are going to like it, comment about it. Start the TikTok algorithm. It's going to keep making money. If you keep getting followers and fans. Now you start a TikTok to be in that TV show movie-type life where everything comes easy for you.

Alison Stewart: He says, everything comes easy for you. And it seems super naive, in my opinion. Are these kids naive?

Lauren Greenfield: They're not naive. In fact, they're so wise beyond their years but I think what Keshawn is speaking to is this Hollywood fantasy of you get famous and then you have that TV lifestyle of fame and fortune. I think in a world where there's not as much real social mobility as there used to be, for Keyshawn, going viral, getting famous on TikTok is a path to social mobility.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask about the algorithm because they speak about it very matter-of-factly. They don't really seem frightened of the algorithm. Why aren't they scared of it?

Lauren Greenfield: I mean, I think in episode three, you'll see that they do deconstruct the really scary effects that the algorithm has. I called it peer pressure and then crossed out peer and replaced it with algorithms, so algorithm pressure. We see one girl, Marin, talking about how the algorithm exacerbated an eating disorder and how she had both her public social media, and then she also had her secret social media.

In the secret social media, it taught her how to have a better eating disorder and I think that's the really scary thing and what we need the tech companies to help address is that right now, in the interest of getting maximum engagement, the algorithm will take a young person by the hand and take them down the path to exploit their greatest vulnerabilities, and especially with a developing brain and a very addictive app.

And so we see how kids can learn how to have a better eating disorder, how if they have anxiety and depression, they can connect with other people who are going through that for both good and for bad.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the series Social Studies with its director, Lauren Greenfield. We'll have more after this quick break. This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Lauren Greenfield. She's a director of Social Studies. It's a series which looks at kids and social media. You can stream one and two on Hulu right now. One question I wanted to ask you is the way that the series opens up, it's really, really interesting because they're at a school assembly, they've got mass on, and the head of school is touting that Steve Kerr went to their hospital and went to their school.

There's a picture of Steph Curry and Steve Kerr and one of the girls is looking him up on the internet, and she's like because she thinks she's talking about Steph Curry and she keeps saying, why are they lying to us? What is the show about how the internet affects what students believe? It was really an amazing shot.

Lauren Greenfield: Oh, thank you. I mean, I think that scene just speaks to the disinformation that kids who get, but also how they think they know it all and how they're checking everything in real-time and not necessarily believing authority. All of those contradictions and the disinformation from social media and the crazy situations that happen because of it is part of the narrative. As we go through the series, we.

Alison Stewart: We got a text here that says, kids used to want to be astronauts and now all they want to be is influencers. When did this change occur, and why has this permeated so quickly? Do you want to address that?

Lauren Greenfield: Yes. I think that this kind of kids wanting to be rich and famous rather than wanting to have a specific career is something that I've been looking at since my last work Generation Wealth. I think with social media, we see people going viral for the strangest, most random things and we also see how that virality and the number of likes can then create income. We see that for Jack, for example, who starts getting paid by Snapchat because he has this show called How Much is Your Fit? Where he asks people how much their clothes costs.

I think in this time of image being so important and actually less real social mobility than in prior generations, kids seeking fame and fortune is a driving value.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some calls. Lori is calling in from Westchester County. Hi, Lori. Thanks so much for calling All of It.

Lori: Hi, thanks for having me and thank you for bringing up this incredibly important conversation. Your screener was so kind to me. This is a very personal subject. We lost my niece to suicide related to social media and so we made the decision to not give our daughters, we have four daughters ranging from college age down to second grade and decided not to give them access to smartphones.

I just want to put that plug out there and now my daughter is in college and studying neuroscience because she wants to learn more about how her brain was protected from not being involved in it all those years. She has a smartphone now, obviously, she's an adult but just wanted to delay that to give her brain a chance to develop and be healthy.

Alison Stewart: Lori, thank you so much for calling in. We really appreciate your comment. Let's talk to Jason on the Upper West Side. I believe he's a parent to a 14-year-old. Is that right, Jason?

Jason: Hey. Yes, thank you so much. Yes, I am parent to a 14-year-old daughter and just like the previous caller, we were wanting to keep the phone from her and now she's a freshman in high school in New York City and we said, okay, we're going to give you an Apple Watch but to have an Apple Watch, we have to have a phone so we have a phone that's at home that doesn't go with her to school and of course, she's now spending more time on it on the weekends and we're really on the cusp of, okay, do we just take it away completely on the weekends and when she's home?

I'm wondering kind of what interventions in an immediate way can help to insulate our kids. It's obviously hard to keep the phone away from our children, but maybe that stern decision would be very positive and worth doing. I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

Alison Stewart: Yes, Jason. Thank you so much for calling in. What do you think, Lauren?

Lauren Greenfield: Well, first of all, I'm so sorry for the loss of the first caller and that is a real phenomenon that's going on now is huge increases in suicidal ideation and actual suicide. That's a story that gets addressed in episode five. I think one of the things that Jonathan, who's a young person who makes a parallel film in the series, says is that social media is our lifeline, but it's also a loaded gun.

I hear the second caller talking about how hard it is to keep the phone away from young person for whom it is a big part of social life. I think it's really hard for people to address this on their own. I love all of the restrictions that parents are starting to talk about and put on with the phones and that schools are also doing and want to mention that we have also created a parent guide so parents can talk to their kids about all the issues coming up, which I think is really important because a lot of parents don't know exactly what's going on.

In fact, we showed this-- We had a screening on Thursday night, and there was a teacher who had a couple of the students that had very intense experiences at high school in her class and she said she had no idea. I think learning from kids, first of all, is really, really important but I also think it's too much pressure to put either on kids to expect to self-regulate or on parents.

I think we need regulation from government. All other kinds of media is regulated except this one that exposes kids to such inappropriate things that not only can their parents not control, but they can't control. They talk about seeing things that they did not want to see, that the algorithm feeds them. I think the tech companies need to take responsibility and create algorithms that are not designed for maximum engagement, but designed in the best interest of kids.

I think as much as parents can both know what's going on in their phone and also restrict the use, especially collectively, because I think kids do need to have that social connection, but when a whole group stops using the phone at school, for example, they find other ways to make it. This series is really an opportunity to hear from the young people about what they think.

We do hear from a lot of experts who have different ideas about how to help this situation, but this series, the young people are the experts and at the end of the show, in episode five, they are saying they wish they had more opportunities to connect in person without devices and how amazing and healing that is for them.

Alison Stewart: Let's play another clip from the series Social Studies. This is one of the segments where the teens are helping each other through a teen hotline. Let's listen to Jonathan. He's age 17. This is from Social Studies.

Jonathan: Hey, this is team line. What's your name?

Mila: Mila

Jonathan: Hi, Mila. How old are you? 14. Awesome. And does that make you in 9th grade? 8Th grade? What's going on tonight? Okay. On what website did you meet him?

Speaker 6: If you're comfortable telling me, have you had any of those thoughts recently?

Speaker 7: How old are you? 13. Does that mean you're in 7th grade? Well, thank you for calling in and for sharing that with me. That must have been really scary to be talking to someone who's that much older, especially when you don't know them, right? Yes, absolutely. You mentioned that you don't want to tell them what happened. Was there something specific that happened with this person?

Alison Stewart: That is from Social Studies? How often did the teenagers that you had in your documentary, how often do they meet someone online?

Lauren Greenfield: Oh, I think probably almost 100% of the people in the series met people online. I think that that's where a lot of the social life was and we hear from one girl, Jordan, saying that she finds it much easier to talk to people online than in real life, where there was a lot of social anxiety coming back to school and I think-- and sometimes in good ways.

We also heard from a trans character who talks about how she found community online. I think that is also real and important and same with even Jonathan participating in teen line. That is a teen-to-teen resource, which is both on the phone in person and online. There's no question that they're meeting people online but then that also opens up for predators and older people and all of these introductions that we want to protect our kids from.

Alison Stewart: This is a question from someone who had to drop but it's interesting, I folded into one of mine as well, that many of the issues in the show appear among teenagers. Eating disorders, drugs, loneliness, things that you find in teenagers. How much of the outgrowth of kids having mental health issues are normal-- not normal, but are teenage behaviors and how much does the Internet change that?

Lauren Greenfield: I think that the young people in the show are very clear about the way that social media amplifies and increases and I think we see that in the research, too, all of these issues that are and have been part of teenage life for a long time but we see how online bullying really amplifies the effects of bullying. We see how racism becomes more less inhibited online.

We see how slut shaming, which we've known since Hester Prynne but because of the way the images of girls online and the way that communicates becomes so all encompassing, anxiety and depression we see being increased. We can see that so empirically. Even I would just watch my own son during the time I was filming this, go online for a couple of hours and then be in a bad mood or depressed afterwards with body image and eating disorders.

My first film was about eating disorders, it came out in 2006, and at that time, one in seven girls suffered from an eating disorder. When I started this project, one girl said to me, half of my friends have eating disorders from TikTok, and the other half are lying. I think the triggers for all of these things have just become so ubiquitous and then I had the good fortune of meeting the surgeon general a few days ago, and he said that there was an epidemic of loneliness.

That really resonated with me in terms of what I saw, that kids reach out online because they're lonely, but it doesn't satisfy that need for connection in the same way in-person connection and real, deep friendship does.

Alison Stewart: Let's get Alma real quickly. Calling from Ossining. Alma, you have about 30 seconds. Go for it.

Alma: Hi. Yes, I'm calling to offer a resource for families. It is called the wait until [unintelligible 00:26:35]. The idea is to build a community of families that are delaying social media and smartphones for their kids. It helps you find out about other families in your community who are doing the same thing. That way when your kid is saying everybody has a phone, you can say, actually, they don't.

They also offer options for phones that are not smartphones in case families still want to communicate with kids. I highly suggest the wait until [unintelligible 00:27:02].

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling. The series is called Social Studies. It's directed by Lauren Greenfield. It's premiering on FX and it streams on Hulu. Lauren, thank you so much for your work and your work today.

Lauren Greenfield: Thank you so much for having me.

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