“Can’t Look Away”: New Documentary Examines How Social Media Addiction Can Harm — Even Kill — Kids

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Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is a new documentary that exposes the real-life consequences of the algorithms of Big Tech companies and their impact on children and teens. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11 billion advertising to minors in the U.S., where 95% of teenagers use social media. One in three teens uses social media almost constantly. “These products, they’re not designed to hook us, adults,” says Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle who is featured in Can’t Look Away. “They are designed to hook children.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

New York could soon become the next state in the country to ban cellphone use during school hours. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers are nearing an agreement to institute an all-day ban on cellphone usage in schools, known as Bell to Bell, in a push to address the negative consequences of social media on kids. More than a dozen states have instituted complete phone bans or restrictions on cellphone usage in schools.

We turn now to a new documentary, Can’t Look Away, that exposes the tragic consequences of social media use on young people. This is the trailer.

911 OPERATOR: Tell me exactly what happened.

JENNIE DESERIO: I’m trying to give him CPR. I need to give him CPR.

911 OPERATOR: OK, but that’s —

JENNIE DESERIO: I’ve been giving him CPR.

911 OPERATOR: Ma’am, I need you to take a breath. I need to know what happened.

JENNIE DESERIO: He blew his head off!

I feel like TikTok just put the gun in his hand and told him, “Pull the trigger.”

MOTHER: How many more children have to die because Snapchat chooses profits over safety?

MICHAEL BREWER: My heart stopped seven times.

JASON TANNER: I don’t know of any other kids that OD’d on fentanyl that are still here.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: The Social Media Victims Law Center is a law firm founded for the sole purpose of holding social media companies accountable for the harms that they’re causing children.

JASON TANNER: Let’s say I’m a dealer. I can easily locate you. “Hey, I’m going to be at the park around the corner. You can come meet me here.” It’s like the platform was built for that.

JAIME PUERTA: I found my son’s lifeless body due to fentanyl poisoning. They have the best distribution system in the world, and nobody has stopped them.

SEN. LAPHONZA BUTLER: What do you say to those parents, Mr. Spiegel?

EVAN SPIEGEL: I’m so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: For years, because of Section 230, the doors to this courthouse and the entire American legal system was closed to them.

MATTHEW BERGMAN: These products were specifically designed to be addictive to adolescent brains. And this is known to the defendant.

It’s just me and Glenn and Laura down here, up against the most powerful, richest companies in the world.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: People say “David and Goliath.” But I say, “It’s not Goliath. This is Leviathan.”

GLENN DRAPER: We’re gathering evidence that is going to show the judge that Snapchat is full of it when they say that we don’t know how it works. We know how it works.

Hi, Michael. We’re going to make a difference.

MATTHEW BERGMAN: This is the first case that’s ever been tried in this way, based on the design of their algorithm, based on the design of their platform, not the content.

JENNIE DESERIO: My son and his girlfriend had had disagreements. Imagine having that sadness, and you’re searching for help, and what you’re getting is suicide content.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: These companies have been gaslighting us for years.

AMY NEVILLE: This is all about money.

UNIDENTIFIED: The purpose of all commercial ventures is to create a demand.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Our children are the casualties.

AMY NEVILLE: We need to take back the power from these companies.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: They created a dangerous situation and then manipulated these kids.

MATTHEW BERGMAN: They know the levels of addiction, sexual abuse. They know the levels of suicide. They’re not showing our kids what they want to see. They’re showing you what they can’t look away from.

JESSICA GRANT: We all feel empathy for the plaintiffs and their losses, but plaintiffs have not, and indeed cannot, assert any legal theory under which Snap would be held accountable.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: These parents are going out there every day and retraumatizing themselves.

AMY NEVILLE: I will never see his face again or hear his laugh.

If this can save even one person, it’ll be worth it.

MATTHEW BERGMAN: If this is the fight I’ve been training for for 30 years, all right, let’s go to war.

AMY GOODMAN: Can’t Look Away, Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media, a new documentary directed by the award-winning film team Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz, inspired by an investigation into child safety online by Bloomberg News journalist Olivia Carville. Today, Olivia wins a George Polk Award for her reporting, and the film begins streaming on Jolt and also starts a theatrical release, a theatrical run here in New York City at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema — DCTV, where Democracy Now! used to broadcast from.

We’re joined now by the director, Matthew O’Neill, and a lawyer featured in Can’t Look Away, Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, which represents 4,000 children.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Matt, first talk about why you did this film.

MATTHEW O’NEILL: You know, when Perri and I were first introduced to this subject through Olivia’s reporting and through the team at Bloomberg News, we had that sense, that probably many of your listeners and watchers have, that social media is vaguely bad, that it’s invading kids’ lives, that it’s leading to addiction or too much screen time. As we got into the cases and we met the families that the Social Media Victims Law Center represent and we learned the details and we heard from Laura and from Matt, it overwhelmed us, because it is so much worse than you imagine, so much worse than we ever imagined, what’s being fed to children on all of these social media apps.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Laura Marquez-Garrett, you were this high-end lawyer in Seattle, corner office. Your future was made. Your kids would be very well taken care of. You have four of?

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: I do. Little — four small children, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And one — two are identical twins?

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Yes, the oldest. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: OK. But you decided to leave that. Why?

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Because I have four small children. And so, when I — you know, at the time, they’re young enough — my oldest are 9 — and I was not aware of what was happening. And when I first heard and I met Matthew Bergman, our founder, I said, “Well, what social media harms?” I had no idea what was happening. When I met with him and read his first complaint, Selena Rodriguez, an 11-year-old who died by suicide about two years after she got her first iPad, I then watched Social Dilemma on Netflix. And when I saw these designers saying, you know, “Of course we don’t let our children use these products,” the attorney in me, defense bar — I was a member of the defense bar, by the way, not a plaintiff’s attorney — the attorney in me said, “If these manufacturers and designers and distributors don’t let their own children use these products, they’re not only harming kids, but they know it.”

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the story of 16-year-old Mason Edens.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Mason Edens, a young man in Arkansas, friends, family, no history of mental illness, and he goes through heartbreak. He goes through a breakup. And, you know, his parents, the devices are — they keep an eye on him. They make sure that he’s not watching them too much. What they don’t realize is that that TikTok algorithm, when it turns, it can turn fast. And Mason is going through heartbreak. So, as he’s looking for things like inspirational quotes, motivational speeches, TikTok begins to send him heartbreak and even suicide. I mean, we have a screenshot where he says — I think it’s inspirational quote, and he gets sort of the “she never loved you, she never will.”

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to this 2022 case. I hate to call Mason a “case.” His mom is Jennie DeSerio. He dies at 16. She later examined his phone, as you’re describing, and finds these TikTok videos that he had liked, that directly promoted suicide, some of which remained on the platform more than a year later. This is DeSerio, his mom, speaking to the Scrolling to Death podcast.

JENNIE DESERIO: What I didn’t realize is how quickly an algorithm can change. I didn’t realize that overnight, literally liking one video, an algorithm can completely flip. And so, in less than two weeks’ time, the algorithm flipped on TikTok. So, I was that parent that was involved.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I don’t know, Laura, that people really understand when you say, “Oh, the algorithm, and it sends him down this suicide path.” Explain exactly what happens.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Yes. So, I want to start by saying what many adults don’t realize is that these products, they’re not designed to hook us, adults; they’re designed to hook children. Right? There’s internal documents that say, “Get them young. The younger, the better,” literally — that’s a direct quote. And so, these products work differently for kids.

So, when Mason Edens is depressed and sad, the platforms know that, and they exploit it. And so, when he is searching for inspirational quotes, if they were to show him things like, “Hey, it’ll be OK. Go talk to your parents. Go get some sunshine” — right? — what would he do? He’d stop using. And they don’t want these children to stop using. They program for engagement. So, what parents need to understand, everyone needs to understand, our children are having a very different experience on these products. It is not only the content that’s being sent, it’s the volume, it’s the manner, it’s the overwhelming nature, and the addiction that various mechanisms are creating, such that they cannot look away.

AMY GOODMAN: Why are teens particularly vulnerable? Maybe that’s a very obvious question.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Well, no. It’s the development of the frontal lobe. And, in fact, there are public Meta documents with brain scan pictures, saying, like, they are more vulnerable until they’re about 24 or 25, because the development of their frontal lobe. They are more — I mean, think about how our children act. Look, I have young children. And sometimes I’m like, “Where — like, what is going through their head?” They have not yet — their frontal lobe is not developed. They don’t have the same reasoning or judgment that we do.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Bahr worked as an ad sales manager for TikTok in Germany. In 2021, he grew concerned about the app’s algorithm’s pushing dangerous content, so he alerted company leaders, but his warnings went unheeded. Let’s go back to another clip from Can’t Look Away. It starts with Bahr.

CHARLES BAHR: I think TikTok as an app has a positive side when it comes down to impacting culture. But what I see is that the platform is really not a safe environment for anybody within the young audience.

MITCH PRINSTEIN: AI is pushing content that they know will be provocative, something fearful or anger-inducing, because we know that the more kids are steered towards this emotional content, the longer they’ll stay online.

ARTURO BÉJAR: We asked hundreds of thousands of teenagers, “Have you ever received unwanted sexual advances on Instagram?” One in eight 13- to 15-year-olds, yes, in the last seven days.

JASON TANNER: If it has anything to do with drugs, it’s going to be on Snapchat. This is where it is 90% of the time.

WHISTLEBLOWER: They’re petrified of being held responsible for the deaths of minors. It’s a perfect storm of corporate greed for maximum profitability.

AMY GOODMAN: So, it started with Charles Bahr. Matt O’Neill, if you can explain? And also talk about fentanyl and drug use and what TikTok has to do, for example, with this. There’s a huge discussion about TikTok right now, like: Is it going to go dark? Who’s going to buy it? But this is not the discussion that’s taking place.

MATTHEW O’NEILL: So much of the conversation is about foreign policy and China and who owns it. What Charles is bringing to the fore is this sense that TikTok entraps children, that it’s not what they’re looking for. I think we think sometimes you use social media to look up a news topic, or you think that these kids might be searching for drugs or suicide. That’s not what’s happening. They’re being fed this content. It’s not their choice. These aren’t bad kids. The parents aren’t bad parents; they’re just without any real recourse in terms of facing these billion-dollar corporations.

When it comes to fentanyl-laced pills, it’s Snapchat. Snapchat has become a platform where young people have access to drug dealers. And the unique way their messages disappear is really appealing to someone who wants to sell drugs to a minor. And these fentanyl-laced pills that young people are often buying, thinking that they’re not fentanyl — they don’t know that they’re buying fentanyl — has led to an unbelievable number of deaths.

AMY GOODMAN: We just saw the trailer, and in it is a young man who’s in a wheelchair, Laura. Tell us his story. He didn’t die.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Right. Well, his heart stopped several times, right? And actually, so I was going to say, I mean, this is the stories people need to hear, the truth of what’s happening. I have talked to many, many children who have said the same story over and over, which is, “I was 12. I wanted to use Snapchat for the silly filters. You know, my coach, my parents, my teacher showed them to me. I began using Snapchat. I had never heard of marijuana. And all of the sudden, my feeds are filled with it. I’m getting these quick ad recommendations.” And Snap says this is your friend. Not only do they say to children — we tell them, “Watch out for strangers.” So, Snap said, “OK, this is your friend. And I’m going to give you points when you snap this person. You may know them. This is what it’s all about. This is fun.” They make it look safe.

And so, I talk to these children who say, “Look, I’d never heard of drugs, and then, I’m getting drug menus. And Snap is saying, 'This is your friend. I'll give you streaks and scores and trophies and charms.’ And so I add them. And now I’ve got drug menus. And by the way, now it looks cool. Like, there’s kids my age doing this.”

AMY GOODMAN: And what do the CEOs, like Mark Zuckerberg, understand? We only have 30 seconds.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Everything. They know. They know.

AMY GOODMAN: And what does that mean? How are you holding them accountable? Your organization, Social Media Victims, represents 4,000 kids.

LAURA MARQUEZ-GARRETT: Right. They are putting profits over people. They have known for years that they are hurting children. They have concealed that fact from all of us. They have told us their products were safe, so that they can make billions and billions of dollars with no accountability. And until we start holding them accountable, they have no reason to change.

AMY GOODMAN: Laura Marquez-Garrett is a lawyer with the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle. The film centers around her and many of the victims of social media. Matthew O’Neill is the co-director of the new documentary, Can’t Look Away. And, Matt, where can people start watching today?

MATTHEW O’NEILL: Go to Jolt.Film now. There are share codes. One of the things that’s important about this is that we want people to be able to share it with their family. And also there’s a discussion guide. So, if you want to watch this film with your children, you can do it.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, it’s going to be at Firehouse Cinema, DCTV, tonight premiering. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.