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The media industry is facing a social reckoning.
After mounting scrutiny of social media’s impact on young users, the U.K. announced Monday that it would move forward with a ban on children under 16 using apps such as
TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.
The news arrived just days after the first trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning” dropped online. The film, like its predecessor, takes aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — this time focusing on allegations that Facebook ignored internal warnings about the platform’s effects on young users and mental health.
Jeremy Allen White, the star of the hit Hulu series “The Bear,” spent five seasons portraying the extraordinary anxieties associated with running a kitchen. After the show ends this summer, his next project — “The Social Reckoning” — tackles the root of the problem. At the final season’s premiere in lower Manhattan, the star praised the decision as a “great” step forward.
“It’s remarkable how addictive this stuff is,” White told Variety Monday night at Nine Orchard. “I think there needs to be a correction. It’s never going to go away, but I do think there needs to be boundaries or guidelines at a certain point. And I hope there is some kind of slide back into more of an analog approach in life. Because this is all moving very fast and it’s a little scary.”
White, a father of two, said his children (ages 7 and 5) don’t have their own phones or iPads, though they occasionally “mess around” with his or their mother’s devices. He told Variety’s Marc Malkin last fall that when it comes to his kids adopting social media, he wants to “keep them away from it as long as [he] can.”
The day-to-day challenge of managing screen time has become a growing concern for parents in the U.S. According to a recent Pew Research survey, more than 64% of parents allow children 12 and under to use smartphones or tablets, even as nearly half say smartphones do more harm than good. (Eight in 10 believe the risks of social media outweigh the pros).
But concerns about technology use aren’t limited to children. White’s co-star Ayo Edebiri admits she has “bad habits” with her smartphone and dreams of a simpler solution: ditching it altogether.
“I really want a flip phone,” she said. “If I didn’t have contractual obligations and emails to answer, I genuinely would be like Steve Martin, Bill Murray mode. Like, call me and get the voicemail. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’m old enough to remember I had a job where like I had a work email, and when the work day was done, it was over. That’s my dream for society: real office hours again. You can’t reach me after eight.”
Perhaps “The Bear” continues to resonate because of its visceral portrayal of anxiety, capturing the feeling with a level of intensity and realism rarely seen on television.
“I have the things that I do for myself that help me out,” White says about dealing with his anxiety. “But I’ll tell you, it’s always something that’s very easily accessible to me — and that comes in handy while we’re shooting the show, for sure.”
