A society driven by book learning has given way to one in which our youngsters come of age via social media. That’s how a life’s education has evolved–or devolved–for the lion’s share of teenagers today. They are the first generation to grow up with social media their entire life, where Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and the like are a 24/7 proposition. These platforms for them have become indispensable for expressing–and coping with–life, and in many ways help define their self-image and shape their identities.
Social Studies–an FX/Hulu docuseries created and directed by acclaimed documentarian Lauren Greenfield–delves into this world in a most personal, intimate manner, connecting with a group of teens from different high schools, races and socioeconomic backgrounds who in 2021 return to the classroom after an extended, pandemic-induced period of virtual learning. The kids have given Greenfield access to their social media feeds and interactions. We see their lives unfold, at times witnessing pain and sorrow, a continuum of experiences ranging from harrowing to inspiring, from being bullied to somehow trying to reach out to others in need.
Social Studies is a fly-on-the-wall verite look at teens living their lives–but that description doesn’t do the docuseries justice. We also get to listen to these youngsters. We don’t rely on what professional experts have to say on the topic. Rather the kids are the experts in this important series. They speak from their lived experience in a way, said Greenfield, that’s “thoughtful and wise. We can see how they care and how they are affected. But this knowledge doesn’t give them immunity from it.”
These youngsters are both the subjects and the experts–as they allow us to watch what they experience. We also see their media–what they create, how they project themselves in the world, and how they talk with their peers. These kids who are the focus of the series also get to periodically meet in person with each other–during roundtable sessions with Greenfield. It’s a face-to-face experience through which they realize they’re not alone, that they have shared concerns, angst, hopes and fears. The in-person connection is almost an antidote of sorts to the isolation often experienced in social media.
Greenfield recently met U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy during a taping of The Drew Barrymore Show. Greenfield was there to promote Social Studies and raise awareness of the issues it uncovers. Greenfield recalled that Dr. Murthy described our society as being impacted by “an epidemic of loneliness.” While young people are making “friends” and connections on social media, it’s not fulfilling the need for the deep friendship and connections that they yearn for. Jonathan, one of the teens in Social Studies, said at one point, “We need to learn to meet people again.”
For Greenfield, perhaps the biggest takeaway from her experience on Social Studies is what she calls “the toxicity of comparison culture and how that affects mental health–24/7 comparing yourself against not just other kids in your clique, class or school but to the entire world.” Teens are up against fictionalized, Photoshopped images–and have fictionalized their own images as well in order to compete.
In some respects, just as book learning has given way to social media, Greenfield’s professional path has made a sort of parallel transition. As a photographer, filmmaker and chronicler of the human condition, she has a creative arc that began with insightful books addressing societal issues. She is now shedding light on many of those same issues as they have been impacted by social media. Her first book was “Fast Forward” which showed how teens are unduly influenced by image, celebrity and materialism. Later came Greenfield’s book “Thin” which spawned her directorial debut, a feature-length documentary of the same title which chronicled four women as they struggle to fight eating disorders. The lauded doc. premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and helped Greenfield gain the attention of the advertising community, sparking an ongoing career in commercialmaking, highlighted by Procter & Gamble/Always’ “#LikeAGirl” in 2014 which earned her a DGA Award nomination, won a primetime Emmy Award, 14 Cannes Lions (including the Titanium Lion), seven Clios and was designated by YouTube as one of the top “Ads of the Decade.”
Greenfield noted that in the film Thin, a statistic was cited that one in seven women had an eating disorder. Fast forward to Social Studies in which a teen girl shares that half of the kids she knows have eating disorders–and the other half are lying that they don’t have such a disorder. Greenfield observed that everything she documented in Thin and “Fast Forward” is now “on steroids”–in large part due to social media that are “algorithmically tailored” to kids by engineers who know brain science, helping to plumb personal vulnerabilities.
As for what drew her to the subject matter, Greenfield cited family. She has two kids, six years apart. The elder son grew up as a book reader, complemented by social media. But his younger sibling, underscoring what a difference just a handful of years in age can make, is more steeped in and reliant on social media. Greenfield witnessed first hand how addictive these platforms can be. This spurred the filmmaker to begin exploring why–and to try to figure out how this is impacting the first generation of youngsters who’ve never known a world without social media. From this Greenfield crafted what she described as “a social experiment,” following the smartphones of some 15 teens for a year–and in the process, giving these youngsters a voice and learning from them.
Greenfield assembled an ensemble of artists who gave deeper production value to the social experiment. A kind of third camera approach captured phone screen texts and images, meshing them into the series narratively and visually. Rather than just display social media screen data against a black background, this messaging appeared over live action and/or alongside live action and dialogue–akin to the multi-tasking, layered experience we have in real life on social media. Greenfield brought in trusted collaborators such as editor Catherine Bull of post house Lost Planet, whom she worked with on varied projects over the years. Graphic artist Eric Jordan provided animation which was seamlessly threaded throughout Social Studies. Oscar-winning (All Quiet on the Western Front) composer Volker Bertelmann did the original score for the docuseries. And the title song for Social Studies was Olivia Rodrigo’s hit, “jealousy, jealousy.”
Annenberg Foundation
Another key component to this social experiment is the involvement of the Annenberg Foundation which not only presented Social Studies with Greenfield’s production company INSTITUTE, but also rolled out an expansive suite of online resources via Annenberg Learner to help parents and educators contend with the challenges of social media use and abuse among young people in order to prevent harm in their communities. This educator-generated and -curated content became available online (www.learner.org/socialstudies/) on September 26 to align with the timing of Social Studies. The first two episodes of the docuseries debuted last Friday (9/27) on FX and then streamed on Hulu the next day. The remaining Social Studies episodes premiere one at a time each week on FX on subsequent Fridays (including today, 10/4) and will be available to stream on Hulu on Saturdays. There are five Social Studies episodes in total.
The Annenberg curriculum can help parents, educators and the youngsters themselves–and hopefully serve as a catalyst for dialogue between and among them. The Annenberg Learner content is designed to support educators and parents in talking to teens about difficult topics and situations (body image, sexual exploitation, drug and alcohol use, fame/influence, suicidal thoughts) that surface and can be aggravated further, if not implode, online.
Greenfield shared an irony in parental behavior that hits home for her. She observed that when your teen goes out of the house, you have a flurry of questions. Where will you be? Who are you seeing? What time will you be home? But these questions fall by the wayside when your kid is at home with you. If he, she or they are beside you in the living room, parents operate under the illusion that everything’s fine. But the fact is you don’t know who they are talking to, what crowd they’re hanging out with online, if they’re being bullied or the target of online predators. Social Studies aspires to raise parental awareness, understanding and caring about the dangers and potential crises their kids face. And like the in-person sessions among the teens and Greenfield, so too does the docuseries hope it can help youngsters to realize that they are not alone when it comes to feelings of alienation, loneliness, and wanting to belong no matter what the cost.
Greenfield is co-founder of the aforementioned INSTITUTE, a production house committed to opening up opportunities for talented directors from underrepresented sectors–women, different ethnicities, people of color and of different sexual orientations. Through her own career she has made inroads, helping to break the glass ceiling. Greenfield, for example, made history with “#LikeAGirl” as the first solo woman director to be nominated for the DGA Award in the commercials category–that came in 2015 (when in past years the only other woman nominees in the spotmaking category were part of directing teams with men). Even before that breakthrough, Greenfield had a DGA Awards pedigree. Two years earlier she earned her first DGA Award nomination for The Queen of Versailles, which also earned Greenfield the Best Documentary Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Greenfield has also garnered Writers Guild Award nominations for the documentaries Generation Wealth and The Kingmaker. Generation Wealth additionally was honored with the Film Independent Spirit of Independence Award.
