Yukari Iwama MMA201

SOCIAL MEDIA DANGERS DOCUMENTARY – CHILDHOOD 2.0

Childhood 2.0 is a documentary about the change in childhood activities after the rise of
the Internet and social media hence why it is call Childhood 2.0. The documentary also tackles
about the dangers online and mental health of the children. It also discussed about why,
statistically, the mental health of kids these days are at an all-time low and how kids these days.
The description of the documentary sums up the discussion and the purpose of this video, “For
the first time in history, the greatest threat for children became mental illness and suicide.
Though, many parents still see dangers as mainly physical and external, but they’re missing the
real danger: Kids spending less time in real life and engaging more of their time online, in social
media websites to be more specific. What are the effects on the next generation's mental,
physical, and spiritual health? Childhood was unchanged for millennia, but this is CHILDHOOD
2.0.” The film features interviews with experts in their own fields such as Cyber Crime
Detective, Richard Wistock, Founder of Protect Young Eyes, Chris McKenna, Director of
CyberBullyHelp, Patti Agatston, PhD., Child Safety Expert and Pediatrician, Free Hess, MD.,
Founders of Parents Who Fight, Sarah and Jesse Siegand, Child and Adolescent Psychologist,
Joel Stoddard, MD, Pediatric Emergency Physician, Sujit Sharma, MD, Child Life Specialist,
Kelly Anne O'Neill, and CEO and CMO of Bark Technologies, Brian Bason and Titania Jordan.
In the first part of the documentary, the film showed that contrast between what it was
like to grow up as a child from the past where there were no cellphones nor internet and what is
it like to grow up today. They discussed how in the past when you want to have fun or
communicate with others you would have to go outside and talk to friends and play unlike today
where phones are seen as a necessity to be able to communicate to other people and be up to date
to the latest trends and sometimes kids of school-age criticize one another if they don’t own a
mobile device, mobile devices are so important these days that they can’t live without it. The
guests were then asked if they think physical dangers are more alarming than online dangers.
Overwhelmingly, both parents and kids think that physical dangers are more prevalent, Dr. Free
N. Hess said that parents do tend to worry more about physical dangers that they do online
dangers simply because they can relate to it, they don’t use social medias the same way kids of
today use it, so they can’t even imagine the dangers that are present online. When the parents
were asked if they think they can protect their children from the dangers online, they said no,
their children will have to navigate and make decisions for themselves without their parents
sooner than they want. The founder/ CEO of Protect Young Eyes said, “It’s pace has been so fast
that some of the, we’ll call them guardrails that are necessary to keep an industry accountable,
have been set aside in the spirit of innovation.”
The way social media is made to get users addicted and make them stay longer on their
apps. Companies use techniques like “pull to refresh” that has the same effect as a slot machine
which has the same addictive qualities. Children are now so obsessed with their phones that they
lose interest in communicating in real life or engaging, they have little to no coping skills and is
harder to open up about more personal things because they don’t want to, or they don’t know
how to open up. One of the setbacks of screen time addiction is the lack of social skill
development and it disconnects them to the real world. With the rise in popularity of social
media it also took a toll on people’s mental health, most kids in the interview admitted to having
depression and anxiety, there are also an increase with the number of suicides, suicide attempts,
and self-harm. A lot of adults also use their phones daily which also influences the child because
they see their parents using it as well. The Documentary also tackles about the dangers online
such as cyber bullying, bad influences online, online predators, and the pressures of being online.
Bullying, before, mostly happens in school but once you get home you feel safe and be
vulnerable but with social media bullies can also bully online such as leaving mean comments
online or cyber bullying, which makes the victim feel unsafe anywhere and mentally it is more
damaging being humiliated in the public eye. Predators and sexual abusers can also utilize the
internet to manipulate kids and adults but mostly young and impressionable kids that are easy to
manipulate. There are also cases were when people are too young to watch pornography, with
graphic genres, get overwhelmed and it influences how they treat their future partners/ lovers,
they might see their lovers as an object or that treating them roughly. There also instances where
people in a relationship demand for a nude pic or a sexual video that then can be used against the
partner that sent it if they ever break up and the victims of these actions are mostly teenage girls,
not only does this affect their well-being, it also humiliates them, and they experience people
judging and shaming them that leads to depression and sometimes even death. Having social
media accounts set standards in beauty especially in sites like Instagram where even if you know
a picture is edited it still hard not to compare yourself to other girls and it also builds a toxic
environment where people compare themselves to others such as the amount of likes one can
receive of the number of followers you have and it’s almost like they’re trying to get validation
or they’re basing their worth from how much likes they receive.
Overall, we cannot deny the fact that technology and social media has helped us in many
ways, but we also cannot deny the fact that it also has its disadvantages. It’s nice that they had
separated the interviews between the parents and the kids because it shows the contrast between
their opinions. The rise of social media there resulted to a massive increase in mental health
issues and suicide. The number of online dangers are also more prevalent than real life dangers
but parents refuse to believe it because they don’t know what dangers are on the internet which
gives predators and online thieves an easier time to do crime. Children today also tend to keep
themselves shut, shouldering their problems because they think that their parents won’t
understand and it would be humiliating to show that vulnerability to others and that takes a toll
on their mental health. Comparing yourself to others and seeing your worth from the amount of
likes that you get is a very toxic environment to live in and unfortunately, it is the world that we
currently live in and the kids admitted that they feel invalidated almost f they have fewer
followers. Even though social media’s purpose is to be able to communicate with other people, it
almost does the opposite because out of their phones and online persona, they can’t even
communicate properly. I hoped that they talked more about grooming and gave examples of it
because there are a lot of famous people that had groomed their fans and has admitted to it but
they are still roaming free. And all these online criminals, most of the time don’t get punished.
The amount of people suffering from mental health issues is very alarming and most of these are
because of social medias and it is hard to combat it because people think that cellphones and
social medias are necessities in our daily life and people these days can’t live without it. When
are we going to put our youth’s well-being first than monetary gain and how can we stop this
addiction to the internet.