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Director(s):
OHNONA (Laetitia)
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Producer(s):
MEMENTO, ARTE FRANCE
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Territories:
Worldwide.
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Production year:
2026
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Language(s):
German, English, French
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Rights:
TV, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET, VOD
The mental health of social media users, especially young people, is in danger. This outcome isn’t the result of some unpredictable evolution of these technologies but rather the consequence of a very well-engineered system designed to make people addicted to social media – one that is oddly reminiscent of the methods the tobacco industry used on people to make them addicted to cigarettes. Today, tech giants are being forced to answer for it in court.
This is a major turning point in the history of the tech industry as lawsuits against Facebook and Instagram (META) YouTube (Google), TikTok (ByteDance) and Snapchat are piling up everywhere across Europe and the United States. Between parents of teenagers who committed suicide after they were manipulated on Snapchat, young girls who developed eating disorders, started suffering from depression and eventually tried to kill themselves because of their addiction to Instagram, each and every one of them wants the tech giants to be held accountable for these excesses. Their argument? Not only did the know from the start what their technologies could do to young people, but on top of that, instead of taking action to put a stop to it, they have made their algorithms stronger, which makes logging out of these trap-like platforms almost impossible.