You come away from the five-part FX documentary series “Social Studies” with the impression that the American teenager of the 2020s is addicted to the smartphone, obsessed with TikTok, socially awkward in the real world, consumed with the drive to become famous, almost casually nihilistic, and capable of breathtaking cruelty online.
You also come away with the impression the American teenager of the 2020s is facing enormous pressures, has been inundated with sexualized imagery from the media since they were very young, is struggling with beauty standards, is incredibly smart, has impressive entrepreneurial spirit, can still get giddy at the prospect of going to prom, and is capable of coming through for peers in times of crisis.
It’s always been a LOT just to be a teenager. For the first generation raised on social media, it feels like everything is magnified, sped up, heightened — and that can be terrifying, for the kids and for their guardians and teachers.
The Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Lauren Greenfield is the architect of this ambitious project, as she and her team follow a diverse group of teenagers in Los Angeles over the course of a year. (The fly-on-the-wall camerawork and editing are consistently impressive.) Each of her subjects has agreed to share their social media, and the result is an instant time capsule that might leave you shaken at times, while other moments are truly inspirational and moving. On balance, though, what we witness is often more troubling and alarming than hopeful.
“Social Studies” introduces us to a number of high students across the Los Angeles area who are returning to class after a year of e-learning due to COVID, with many expressing anxiety about coming back after spending so much time buried in their phones and laptops.
“I used to read and do a lot of art more, now instead I’m on my phone,” says a student named Ella. “Before [COVID], you were interacting with people, like face to face … now [the phone] is the only form of interaction most days. It’s the only way you feel connected to anyone.”
This is a constant theme in the series — how everyone depends on their phone to strike up romances, to stay connected with friends, to create and consume TikTok videos, to find out the info on the latest party. They’ve never known another world.
Ivy tells us that she started making videos when she was 7. “A lot of my childhood is like a big blur. … I was very lonely, and I would live inside my head,” while 14-year-old Jordan notes, “People in real life are more intimidating than people online.”
We meet Jack, who has a mop of curly hair and boundless energy and has created a popular TikTok account in which he patrols areas such as Rodeo Drive, asking people on camera how much their “fit,” aka outfit costs. (It’s quite clever and funny.) Jack’s also a party promoter — renting out venues and charging a cover to hundreds of teens who show up to dance and get wasted, all of it chronicled on everyone’s smartphones, of course.
We hear about myriad instances in which teens are bullied and harassed and subjected to cruel rumors. Sydney recalls how after she told a close friend she wasn’t interested in a romance with him, he released a “dis track” filled with hateful content: “I felt like everybody was staring at me and I just dreaded going to school. … I fell into a really dark place that summer.” Dominic, 17, says that “because I’m brown and a bigger person … cyberbullies [have] a field day.”
A girl named Ellie was friends with actor Jack Dylan Grazer from the “It” movies since they were children. When they started seeing each other romantically, the Internet exploded with hateful memes and videos and comments about her. At the time, she was all of 14 years old. “It really taught me a lot about people,” she says. “I’ve been through my own personal hell.”
Episodes with titles such as “Peer Pressure, Algorithm Pressure,” “Sex Ed” and “Deletions and Culminations” chronicle group discussions about mental health and racism, and the pressure students feel to get into a good college (we see a number of them getting rejection notices via email). Girls talk about eating disorders and body image, and the emotional damage inflicted by following pro-anorexic and pro-fasting accounts (you read that right) on Tumblr and other platforms. Says 18-year-old Cooper, who has a podcast about mental illness: “I’m a recovering perfectionist.”
Each episode of “Social Studies” kicks off with Olivia Rodrigo’s “Jealousy, Jealousy,” with lyrics such as, “Co-comparison is killing me slowly, I think, I think too much, ‘bout kids who don’t know me, I’m so sick of myself …”
It’s almost too spot-on.