'Social Studies' exposes the toxic impacts of social media | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on December 5, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Gen Z is the first generation of digital natives, young people who are literally growing up on social media. It’s where they explore their self-identities, where they make and lose new friends. During the pandemic, it was in fact the only place where they could socialize. But it’s also where they are exposed to dangerous levels of toxic culture, whether that’s through body shaming, overly sexualized content or cyberbullying. Director Lauren Greenfield captured all of this and more in an eye-opening 5-part docuseries on FX called “Social Studies” by following a group of teenagers who gave her an inside look into their online lives. She joins us on The Excerpt to discuss how social media has shaped the adults these teens are becoming.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, December 5th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Gen Z is the first generation of digital natives, young people who are literally growing up on social media. It's where they explore their self identities, where they make and lose new friends. During the pandemic, it was in fact the only place where they could socialize, but it's also where they're exposed to dangerous levels of toxic culture, whether that's through body shaming, overly sexualized content, or cyberbullying. Director Lauren Greenfield captured all of this and more in the eye-opening five-part docuseries on FX called Social Studies by following a group of teenagers who gave her an inside look into their online lives. How has social media shaped the adults these teens are becoming? Thanks for joining me on The Excerpt, Lauren.
Lauren Greenfield:
Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Lauren, the teenagers in your series granted you remarkable access to their online lives by screen recording their phones non-stop during their senior year of high school. We expect teens to be obsessively secretive about their online content with the adults in their lives. What did you say to convince them to say yes?
Lauren Greenfield:
I think this was a really big deal for them, but I think they also understood the importance of it. We began this social experiment right at the beginning of back to school after COVID, and a lot of kids had a lot of anxiety about coming back to school, about relating to other people, about feeling like they weren't good enough from what they had seen on social. One of the things about the group is it's very diverse, not just socioeconomically, but also in terms of their relationship to social. So a lot of them had kind of distinct experiences that made them feel like this was important. Sidney had had a very traumatic slut-shaming experience in high school. Jack was a budding entrepreneur as a party promoter using social media for his business. Keshawn was a musician who was also using it for his business. Ellie had a traumatic viral experience in middle school. So they all kind of understood the importance of what we were doing, and I'm so grateful they made themselves so accessible and vulnerable for our year.
Dana Taylor:
How did you recruit the teens for this project? How did you find them?
Lauren Greenfield:
Well, I decided to do the project in Los Angeles, first of all. I'm from Los Los Angeles. I grew up there. 30 years ago, I did my first book about kids growing up in LA and how they were influenced by the media, but at that time, the media was TV, radio, music, seems kind of archaic and much less in terms of time. So I wanted to go back to this same place and see how it had changed with social media. During COVID, I did almost 200 mini interviews over Zoom just to start to select the cohort. I let it develop very organically where also some of our participants brought in friends, siblings, really wanting to look at the kind of gamut of the kinds of issues and things that people were feeling from body image to bullying, to racism, to kind of all of the traditional problems of high school, but seeing how they were amplified in the social media age.
Dana Taylor:
Lauren, as you mentioned, the teens you followed all lived in or around Los Angeles. How much influence do you think growing up around celebrity culture has on their insecurities?
Lauren Greenfield:
I think Los Angeles was a great place for this case study because in a way, it's the tip of the spear. It's the place where the influencers come, where Hollywood is from, the manufacturing of image. On the other hand, I think media and in particular social media leads to a homogenization of youth culture where kids all over the country are watching the same TikToks and being influenced in very similar ways. So I actually think the geographical differences are much less in this generation than in prior generations, and that these themes will seem very universal. And that was part of why I wanted such a diverse student body so that it wouldn't seem like, okay, well that kid is from this experience, or that kid is from this experience, or only extreme kids get eating disorders.
And you really see how so many of the kids share experience and how relieving it is for them, and I hope for the audience of teenagers too, to see other kids going through what they're going through. A lot of times I'll ask questions like, "Who in here has gone viral?" Half the audience will raise their hand. Or I'll say, "Who has been sent a nude or received a nude?" And all the hands go up. So I think those moments, we really see how universal these issues are, and that is really the point.
Dana Taylor:
I agree that many listening will identify with the teens in this docu-series and the pressure they're exposed to through social media. They were open about their insecurities in a compelling way. What was your experience like as they pull the curtain back for you?
Lauren Greenfield:
I think the thing that is shocking is the pressure of the 24/7 comparison culture. I think being a teenager and even as adults, we deal with this. Everybody's looking at what other people are doing. My last movie Generation Wealth was kind of about keeping up with the Joneses and what that had become. And for the kids on social media all the time, it's all about keeping up with other people. And it used to be other kids in your class or in your school or the popular clique, and now they're comparing themselves with everybody in the world, and a lot of these images are not even real. They're photoshopped or Facetuned or manipulated, and so kids never feel good enough.
And I think that's the really intense pressure that we feel. But there's also hope at the end because these kids are resilient in the way they navigate these experiences, and they do find themselves and their voice. In some ways it's an updated coming-of-age story because they do find themselves, and I think that is kind of the antidote to feeling like you have to be like somebody else.
Dana Taylor:
A lot of the content the young women were consuming and even creating online was overtly sexualized. How can adults moderate this? Is it even possible in the social media sphere to keep kids from trying to grow up too fast?
Lauren Greenfield:
I think there are a lot of things about the experience of girls that will be shocking and upsetting for parents. I think the sexualization of girls, the precocious sexualization and also the body image pressure is very, very tough. Kids want to be popular, which means fame, which means likes, and Sydney explains it so well. She said when she first went online trying to get likes, she posted pictures of her passion, taking pictures of sunsets, no likes. Then she started posting her body, started getting likes. Then she became more and more sexualized, more attention. And I think this is so common. And I think it's a natural response to girls learning that when they show their bodies, that's how they get attention and validation.
And I think that parents need to be in their kid's business on this one. Sydney's mom says, "I don't know if I want to look at her TikTok." And what we show in the show is men writing to her really inappropriate, disturbing things. She even says, "I don't think it's appropriate for a minor the way I make videos about myself." And then we see her in her bedroom doing this interview and she's wearing a sweatshirt and she's nervous and she looks like the most innocent, sweetest teenager, which she also is. So these two sides are living side by side and parents often don't see the other side.
Dana Taylor:
Some of the black and brown kids felt a need to code switch, and at least for one to pass as white, and that just got me. I saw her shoulders go down. I don't want to read into the body language, but can you explain code switching and what compelled them to do it?
Lauren Greenfield:
Again, with the sexuality of girls, there's an ideal that's getting likes on the internet, and a lot of the black and brown kids talked about that ideal being a Caucasian one and feeling like they had to conform, whether it was hair straightening or skin lightening, or Sofia talks about being a Latina girl and feeling like she had too much body hair. And now we know that the algorithm on TikTok actually prefers a Caucasian body type. So these algorithms and this messaging is really harmful for kids' self-image.
And I think what's really beautiful in the series is how honest they are about it and how comfortable they are talking to each other about it. I guess that's one of the things that gives you hope in a world where tech is not looking out for kids' interests and the kids in the show are calling them out on that, but they are so honest with each other and I think we really need to learn from their words.
Dana Taylor:
Another strong theme in your series is suicidal ideation. It's the stuff of parents' nightmares as it was with a mother whose son spontaneously took his own life. Many of the teens you followed admitted to harboring thoughts about ending their lives. How do you counter this mindset online?
Lauren Greenfield:
Well, that was a real shock to me to hear how many kids in our group had felt that way because that wasn't part of my selection. I did not know that about most of these kids. I think one of the things that is so scary is the rise in suicidal ideation, and they really take it apart and deconstruct it in the show. Like Stella talks about just going on TikTok for a few hours and feeling those thoughts. And Jonathan works in a suicide hotline and talks about the rise of these calls from other kids.
I think one of the things that's important is something Jonathan says to Bridget, this mother who's tragically lost her child to suicide. He says, "Some parents are afraid to talk about it because they think that might bring it up and make it happen, but actually it makes it better to talk about it." And I think that's something I want to say about the show. I have heard sometimes parents say, "I'm scared to watch." But I think first of all, it's not scary. I think kids really feel seen and entertained and parents will learn something.
Like Cindy's mom, you might feel like, "I don't want to know what's in my daughter's TikTok." But actually it'll bring you closer. It will start conversations about these important topics and it is too big of a part of our kids' lives for us to step back and not know about it. One of the things that Bridget says who lost her son is parents need to stop talking and start listening. And that's really the whole point of the show is to listen to the kids, to hear them tell the narrative about what's going on in their life.
Dana Taylor:
To your point, there's a line near the end, and Lauren it's when Jonathan says, "Social media is our lifeline, but it's also a loaded gun." Did you find their awareness of the toxicity they experience online surprising?
Lauren Greenfield:
Yes, definitely. I think one of the revelations in the show is how wise they are about it, but how that wisdom isn't enough to protect them from it. That they might say, "I know I don't feel good after looking at other kids' bodies online," for example, but then they continue to do it. And so I think what we have to realize is we can't expect kids to self-regulate. So I think that we need to listen and then we need to put the guardrails in because right now it's completely unregulated. They're giving us a roadmap to how to do it, but they're also saying, "We can't do it alone. The tech companies do not have our best interests in mind. They're trying to exploit us. We become used to exploiting ourselves, and we're having a kind of natural human reaction to all of this, and it's taking us down a bad path."
Dana Taylor:
What's one takeaway that you hope people walk away with after watching your series?
Lauren Greenfield:
I hope it leads to conversations between kids and parents. I think one of the things that really comes out is there's a really big awareness divide in this generation. I feel like it kind of goes back to maybe between my parents and their grandparents, like the '50s. So much has changed in this generation, and there's this huge part of kids' life that they're with 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours a day. I think it's the biggest cultural and educational influence on kids today and parents don't know about it. So I hope it leads to conversations. I think kids want that, and I think that's ultimately why these teens were so brave in participating in the show.
Dana Taylor:
Social Studies is available on FX, Hulu and Disney+ now. Lauren, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Lauren Greenfield:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Social Studies' exposes toxic impacts of social media | The Excerpt
