How do we put the genie back in the bottle?
Reflections on "I Am Gen Z" on its fourth birthday and the day the Online Safety Act comes into force
Today The Online Safety Act in the UK comes into force. Also, the film festival CPH:DOX kicks off this week, which is where, four years ago my documentary I Am Gen Z was first released. Gen Z are now four years older, but has anything else changed in the meantime?
In the interim, no one seems to have figured out how we can live a happy symbiotic life with our phones. We’re like a stuck record on that issue. Article after article continues to be published about it. The byline to Gaby Hinsliff’s recent article in The Guardian is, “A generation who came of age online now feel deprived of real connections. The upside is they are doing something about it”. I wish I could share Gaby’s optimism that their efforts to address this will make a meaningful difference. Since making the film I’ve had countless conversations with individuals setting up “switch off” initiatives - often led by Gen Z themselves - but they rarely seem to stick.
The opening frames of I Am Gen Z begin with a quote from Aldous Huxley written in 1961: “There will be, in the next generation or so, a method of making people love their servitude, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it.” He well and truly nailed that.
Today, parents are more aware of the issues and are putting mobile phone boundaries in place for their kids. But in social settings, or cafes, or in strollers, it is hard not to notice how normalised it has become for a young child to have a screen in their hands to keep them occupied. Many schools have put in place mobile phone bans. The problem is they get switched straight back on as soon as they step outside the school gate, often at the request of parents who wish to track them for their safety on their way home. I’m not shouting at parents here, I get it: It’s really hard to manage this when we are operating in a world which microdoses us all day long with an addictive drug every single day of our lives.
Whose job is it going to be at Ofcom to tell X that it is fining it 10% of its global revenue for hosting harmful content on its platform? Good luck with that!
Legislatively there has been some progress. Australia are attempting to ban social media for under 16s. The European Union has rolled out the Digital Services Act to create “a safer digital space”. The Online Safety Act in the UK came into force today. Some of it has been watered down to enable its passage through Parliament, but it’s better than nothing. Only time will tell if it’s even vaguely enforceable though. Whose job is it going to be at Ofcom to tell X that it is fining it 10% of its global revenue for hosting harmful content on its platform? Good luck with that!
Meanwhile, not only are teenagers still being exposed to content that promotes self-harm and suicide ideation, but now they are being targeted with it!
“Teenagers are no longer at risk only from being exposed to suicide ideation and self-harm content by aggressive algorithms, a preventable harm that cost my daughter Molly her life. Vulnerable young people are now being targeted by appalling online groups, coercing them into self-harm and even suicide.” Ian Russell
And overall the general wellbeing of young people continues to decline.
That I Am Gen Z has remained evergreen as a film also suggests that little has changed. I thought it would be out of date now because of its references to Trump. Wrong! There’s a brilliantly sardonic clip in the film from a Gen Z participant about the news that Tik Tok might be banned because of its Chinese ownership. Sound familiar?
The film touches on the role AI will play in Gen Z’s future, well that’s now accelerating at a rate of knots. The good news for Gen Z is that writing their dissertation just got a lot easier thanks to Chat GPT.
The film raises a red flag about the dangerous spread of conspiracy theories. I went on to make a whole film about that, The Conspiracists. Spoiler alert: the problem is more pervasive and worse than I thought.
“I Am Gen Z” touches on the question of how to live in a post-truth era? Well we sure as hell are practising that right now. Steve Bannon warned us how this new world was going to work when he said, "The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." Trying to wade through the daily tsunami of sh*t we are being served up right now is turning people away from ingesting any news at all. How many people have told you in the last few months that they’ve stopped reading the news because it’s just too much? It’s a tactic straight out of the authoritarian playbook and it’s working.
At the close of the film Greta bemoans the fact that we’re not doing anything meaningful about the climate crisis. Four years later, how well have we done on that front? Temperatures averaged across 2023 and 2024 exceeded 1.5C for the first time, and Trump is busy ordering websites referencing the climate crisis to be taken down. Sorry Greta.
The problem is how to put the genie back in the bottle? Our phones have become an essential organ. To take part in daily civic life it feels like we need them as much as our heart, our lungs and our kidneys. No wonder the “switch off” initiatives aren’t sticking. Worse still, we are now witnessing how it can been bought and weaponised to advance one unelected man’s ruthless pursuit of power at any cost.
I’d like to say the solution lies within each and everyone of us. That we each need to find a way to step away from our phones and return to a more analogue way of life. But I am entirely failing on that front, so how can I expect anyone else to? I am writing this on my phone right now and will post it on social media shortly. This after having doom scrolled on it during the night, tuned into the radio on it, dropped my breakfast on it while flicking through the newspaper on it, used it as my compass to navigate to my destination, bought my rail ticket with it, used it as my Walkman on the train, written some letters and memos on it, been to the bank on it - and all of this before 11 am. In my own little rebellion I am quite pleased with the length of that last sentence because it flies in the face of how the algorithms are telling me I should write.
I can only sign this off by saying good luck Gen Z. I’m sorry we did this to you. It seemed like such a great idea at the time.
I Am Gen Z is available to stream on Waterbear, or Amazon Prime in the UK or Amazon in the US.
My latest film The Conspiracists will have its worldwide premiere on 31 March 2025 at AmDocs in Palm Springs, CA.
From 23 June 2025 my film The Line We Crossed will be released in UK cinemas and community centres. If you want to see it on a screen near you, please take a minute to fill out this form to petition your local independent cinema.