There’s nothing new in claims that social media platforms as they aim younger customers trigger kids a number of psychological well being points, from unhappiness and despair to on-line bullying and even teen suicides.
But a Bloomberg News characteristic documentary, Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media, set to premiere April 4 on Jolt, has spotlighted a hyperlink between on-line drug sellers and social media algorithms that enable the sale of pretend tablets to younger individuals on-line, and a ensuing epidemic of drug overdose deaths.
“This is a public health crisis. We’re facing a mental health emergency. It is tied in many ways to social media,” Perri Peltz, who co-directs the characteristic doc with Matthew O’Neill, tells The Hollywood Reporter. Can’t Look Away may also have a theatrical run at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema in New York City and can seem on Bloomberg Media platforms beginning in July 2025.
The doc features a David vs. Goliath authorized battle by dad and mom whose kids died from consuming fentanyl-laced tablets to probably maintain tech giants accountable for the hurt allegedly attributable to their negligence and threatening algorithms.
Can’t Love Away, partially, focuses on the Social Media Victims Law Center and its lawsuit in opposition to Snapchat on behalf of households whose kids met tragic ends after consuming counterfeit prescribed drugs acquired by way of the disappearing messaging app run by guardian Snap.
O’Neill argues the rising commerce in dangerous tablets offered on social media websites outcomes from drug sellers now with the ability to transfer from avenue corners to on-line websites the place preset algorithms are designed to develop into addictive to younger individuals. What’s extra, on-line drug pushers can simply preserve their unlawful actions away from the eyes of oldsters or the authorities through the use of disappearing or encrypted messages.
The social media websites themselves might do much more to guard younger customers, not least by permitting better regulation of their platforms. As O’Neill put it, “these social media platforms consistently choose profits over real harm to children, and these are things a social media company can target.”
The Bloomberg News movie contains interviews with dad and mom concerned in efforts to safe wins within the courts and the halls of energy in Washington D.C. to control social media platforms. The Can’t Look Away trailer contains an interview with Jaime Puerta, who misplaced his solely youngster after his son contacted a drug vendor on Snapchat and died from fentanyl poisoning.
“They have the best distribution system in the world, and nobody has stopped them,” Puerta, who in a lawsuit alleges Snapchat had a task in his son’s loss of life, declares from the steps of the U.S. Congress. Can’t Look Away, based mostly on investigative reporting by Bloomberg News reporter Olivia Carville, warns at one level about using Snap Map, which identifies a consumer’s geographical location. That probably permits drug sellers to extra simply goal potential clients.
Peltz, whose earlier credit embrace Axios on HBO and ‘Surveilled’ with Ronan Farrow, countered prevailing myths about younger individuals making unhealthy selections on social media websites. She argued that, too typically, teen customers see what’s supplied to them by preset algorithms.
“Your kids are looking at content they didn’t ask to see. They’re looking at content that an algorithm decided they should see because the algorithm knows what is most ‘sticky’ for young people, and that’s a euphemism for addictive,” Peltz insisted. All of which underscores an pressing name to motion from the Can’t Look Away movie for trade reform and political motion round social media and its use of algorithms to focus on and probably exploit and endanger susceptible younger individuals.
That marketing campaign has been dealt a blow by the elevated lobbying by social media giants with the brand new Donald Trump administration, with an eye fixed to turning a as soon as adversarial relationship between authorities and Big Tech to their benefit. “You saw, as we all did, so many leaders of tech companies in an unprecedented way appear at President Trump’s inauguration, and obviously one of the biggest tech leaders in the world, Elon Musk, is a very important element in this administration,” O’Neill conceded.
But he added that politicians on either side of the aisle in Washington, D.C., more and more see widespread causes to work for folks and households to reduce the hurt social media websites could cause younger customers. And O’Neill, a two-time Oscar nominee, dismissed any discuss Silicon Valley giants needing fewer guardrails, and no more, to guard U.S. dominance in digital applied sciences in opposition to international rivals like China.
“The United States managed to dominate the automobile industry and innovate with seat belts, and I don’t see why we can’t do the same with technology and with communications and social media,” he insisted. Ultimately, O’Neill sees younger individuals forcing politicians to impose actual regulation on tech giants.
“Kids aren’t suckers and a lot of young people as they discover the ways in which social media companies are taking advantage of them are fueling a backlash. That’s not the power of regulation. That’s the power of public conversation,” he stated.
The movie can also be produced by O’Neill and Peltz. It is Bloomberg News’ second authentic characteristic documentary after Ruin, an earlier authentic doc about Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of his cryptocurrency trade, FTX. Executive producer credit for Can’t Look Away are shared by reporters Carville and Kristin Powers.
