My attempts to educate my 14-year-old daughter Evie on the dangers of social media usually bomb. If I’m lucky, I’ll get an eyeroll and an exasperated, “Yeah, Mum, I know.” If not, a closed door.
I had better luck, however, after watching Molly vs the Machinesthe new Channel 4 documentary about the 14-year-old Molly Russell’s death in 2017 from an act of self-harm, and her father Ian Russell’s tireless campaign to hold Meta to account for its role in it. According to The Times film critic Ed Potton in his five-star review, it’s “a film every parent should watch”. I’d go further: I believe teens need to be on the sofa too.
My daughter is the same age as Molly when she died. I didn’t actually suggest that she watch it, but her curiosity was piqued from across the living room and she sidled over (an accidental win — she had agency here). I’ve shown her other films about online harm — Childhood 2.0, The Social Dilemma etc — to which she reacted with irritation, finding them dry and exaggerated. In fact, I’d abandoned my awareness-raising programme, feeling like I’d spent all my credits.
Molly vs the Machines landed differently. I should add that in an ideal world, I would have vetted it first to ensure she could handle it, as experts recommend (it’s a 15). But there we were, gripped by Molly’s short life story, the re-enactment of her inquest, and the scaling up of Facebook, as it engineered itself “into a machine for manipulating human behaviour”, says a narrator.
What was most compelling for my daughter was the presence of Molly’s close friends, now in their early twenties. Way more relatable than any Silicon Valley whistleblower, they’re seen in the film laughing, crying, chatting, scrolling and talking about still using Instagram, and, of course, their love for Molly.
“They seem honest,” says my daughter afterwards. “Their answers weren’t curated like in those other films, where it feels like the people are handpicked because they don’t like social media.” Someone was paying attention in bias class.
Ian Russell, Molly’s father
PA
From a parent’s perspective, I found myself silently thanking Ian Russell and the director and writers for highlighting all those issues that just sound preachy when I broach them — the dark art of algorithms, the mining of our data, the immorality of Big Tech. No teen is going to leave this film thinking that Meta has their best interests at heart.
“I have no doubt that Instagram helped kill my daughter,” says Russell in the film. “There was no discouragement to stop self-harming, to stop thinking about suicide. In fact, quite the opposite: there was encouragement to keep belonging to the club that said, ‘Yeah, you are worthless … Yeah, there is really only one way out, and here are some ways of doing it.’”
And yet, Russell claims in the film that what happened to his family “could happen to anybody …Before Molly died, [our family] was very ordinary, very normal, absolutely nothing special.” My daughter suddenly seemed so small and vulnerable next to me, not the going-on-18 version we usually see.
The film is careful not to get too graphic. We don’t learn exactly how Molly’s life ends, though some of the suicidal content she watched is shown, for example: “Twinkle twinkle little star, let me get hit by a car.” I glance over to see if my daughter is alarmed.
At this point, I could have pressed pause, advises Danny Brogan, the UK editor of Common Sense Media, a family-focused media review platform that is very useful for checking the age-appropriateness of films, TV shows, games and so on.
Fleur Britten: “My attempts to educate my 14-year-old daughter Evie on the dangers of social media usually bomb”
MICHAEL LECKIE FOR THE TIMES
“If you see your child is upset or confused, it’s an obvious moment to have a chat about what you’ve just watched, any feelings it’s brought up, and whether you both want to continue,” he said.
I did at least ask her afterwards. “It didn’t shock me that much,” she tells me. “I’m seeing more of it. People in my school have been leaving because of mental health issues.”
In fact, the film unlocked a whole new conversation for us around the self-harm she is noticing among peers; it shone a light into dark corners that previously I’d had no idea how to navigate. That said, I’m not exactly expecting her to abandon her hunger for social media, though hopefully she’ll be more understanding as to why we try to restrict it.
It’s exactly these kinds of conversations that the government wants us to be having. Last month the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology launched its new media literacy campaign for families. Its aim is to encourage parents to have regular chats with their kids about toxic and misleading content, in order to increase their resilience to it.
Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, an associate professor at University College London and the author of Smartphone Nation: Why We’re All Addicted to Screens and What Your Family Can Do About Itconsulted on the report. “Co-viewing is a really good idea. It gives you a shared reference point that you can return to in future discussions,” she says.
Indeed, the “real work”, says Brogan, “starts after the programme”. The Common Sense Media website offers advice on what parents can do, for example, suggesting that we set up TikTok accounts to understand it better. It also has its own list of recommended films and TV shows about social media for co-viewing.
Films such as Molly vs the Machines are a gift to parents. Dr Martha Deiros Collado, a child psychologist and the author of The Smartphone Solutionsays: “Films can speak louder to children than parents. That’s OK — it’s still a win if your child hears it better through a teen on TV.”
She says the act of co-viewing this genre allows parents to communicate that these topics are “not taboo, we can talk about them”.
And, she advises, let your child know “they can talk to you about this any time they like”.
But she says you shouldn’t use it as time for a lecture. Instead show curiosity: “Ask your child, ‘What do you think? Who do you relate to in the film? Has it made you think differently?’ You don’t have to agree.”
As the credits roll, my daughter turns to me — I am crying, by the way; she is not — and says thoughtfully: “It’s like, if you take away social media from children, they’ll get bullied. But if you don’t, they might end up bullying themselves. You can’t fix it.”
I fear she’s right, but at least we can talk about it.
