Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media
Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz’s passionate documentary focuses on the damage inflicted by social media.
Image courtesy of Dartmouth Films.
The title of this documentary may be more than a little cumbersome but it is useful for indicating very precisely what the directors Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz have set out to do here. Theirs is a film set throughout in America and it touches on a number of states including Washington, Tennessee, Michigan, Florida and California. That is not surprising because the film is focused on a country-wide issue, namely the harm that is being done to American teenagers by online material to be found on such set-ups as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Youngsters are being bombarded by often unsolicited material which can have serious consequences involving self-harm not stopping short of suicide, the exploitation of those who have been persuaded to send nude pictures of themselves which can be circulated unless a payment is received or the online acquisition of drugs which may well prove fatal.
This situation, which in recent times has become ever more widespread, is one which has long offered limited redress in America. That’s due to the fact that the tech corporations which run these platforms are when challenged able to cite section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a federal law which grants them immunity if what is being protested is content created by their users. Challenging that reading of the law was the purpose of the Social Media Victims Law Center founded by the attorney Matthew Bergman. Their base is in Seattle and featured here alongside Bergman himself are his colleagues Laura Marquez-Garrett and Glenn Draper. We hear too from parents who have lost children and who describe what happened and in one case from one of the direct victims, that being Michael Brewer from Orlando who at the age of twelve and a half was persuaded to obtain fentanyl (it didn’t kill him but left him with brain damage).
In making the case for the prosecution the film also brings in Arturo Béjar who was disillusioned by attitudes at Facebook when he was director of engineering there and Charles Bahr a former employee of TikTok. In addition, we hear from various other people including senators, a captain in the county sheriff’s office in Marquette, Michigan and from Mitchell Prinstein of the American Psychological Association. What emerges very clearly from all this is the extent to which the tech corporations involved value profits over safety and play on the addictive appeal of their platforms. What we see of their CEOs is archive footage and despite some safeguards eventually being incorporated this finds them reluctant to acknowledge any real responsibility. In the later stages of Can't Look Away, we follow one particular hearing in the Los Angeles Superior Court and this becomes a test case as to whether or not in the light of section 230 the court will authorise discovery requiring the various records held to be disclosed on request.
There is no doubt at all that this film by O'Neill and Peltz underlines the number of young lives damaged or destroyed and, while this film is exclusively concerned with the USA, it may be thought that the film's release in the UK is timely in the light of new legislation here in the form of the Online Safety Act 2023 as now implemented. What is in the news here centres on age verification for access to online porn and the resultant discourse in Britain over whether more needs to be done or whether what has been passed is already a step too far as a restriction of human rights. That is not exactly the same as the issue in America but it does serve to act as a reminder that this film chooses to ignore any such questions that some might consider relevant. What we see certainly shows us evidence that something needs to be done but, since that view must surely be widespread already, one feels that the film would have been more valuable had it broadened its approach to consider related matters. Many viewers will have seen the British TV drama Adolescence which recently gained an international reputation but, even as it expressed alarm over the harmful side of the internet, it did impliedly ask one to consider the position of parents and whether or not the situation is one in which protecting their children is now beyond their control. Also absent here is any discussion of whether making tech corporations more readily liable would encourage them out of self-protection to censor material which ought not be censored.
In mentioning these omissions, I could, of course, be accused of asking the film to be a different work from the one intended. But I do feel that there is a public consensus about protecting children and that therefore a wider look at the subject would be more valuable, even if ultimately one does end up applauding the investigations by Olivia Carville of Bloomberg News which are the basis for this film. As it stands and despite limiting its length to 76 minutes, the film does cover similar ground throughout thus becoming a shade repetitive. But its human concern is to be applauded even if I personally would welcome a broader take on what is unquestionably an important subject and a valid matter of deep concern.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Matthew Bergman, Laura Marquez-Garrett, Glenn Draper, Arturo Béjar, Lawrence Riff, Charles Bahr, Toney Roberts, Brandy Roberts, Jennie Deserio, Amy Neville, Jenn Buta, John DeMay, Richard Blumenthal, Marsha Blackburn, Jessica Grant, Jason Tanner, Lovell Larson, Mitchell Prinstein, Michael Brewer.
Dir Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz, Pro Matthew O’Neill, Perri Peltz, Anna Casper and Olivia Carville, Ph Matthew O’Neill, Jeff Arak, Kyle I. Kelly, Taylor Krauss and others, Ed David Meneses, Music Jonathan Zalben.
Bloomberg Originals/Bloomberg Businessweek Films/A Downtown Community Television Center production-Dartmouth Films.
76 mins. USA. 2025. US Rel: 4 April 2025. UK Rel: 8 August 2025. Cert. 15.
