What do young Angelenos think of cellphone bans and Instagram age limits? We asked

“If you’re a parent, Lauren Greenfield’s caller doc astir teens and societal media ‘is a fearfulness movie.’”

That Los Angeles Times header ran connected an August communicative astir Greenfield’s acclaimed five-part docuseries that followed Los Angeles-area precocious schoolhouse students during the 2021-22 schoolhouse year, tracking their cellphone and societal media usage for a revealing representation of their online life.

Greenfield remembers the headline.

“I’ve heard that from parents,” Greenfield says. “And I support proceeding it whenever we surface the series.”

Greenfield has taken “Social Studies” to schools astir the state since its premiere past summer, airing episodes and answering questions, speaking alongside a rotating radical of the show’s subjects. And, yes, the astir communal takeaway remains: Parents person nary thought what’s going connected with their teenagers — though “horror” is successful the oculus of the beholder.

Today, Greenfield and 3 of the “Social Studies” participants — Cooper Klein, Dominic Brown and Jonathan Gelfond, each present 21 — are successful a Venice bungalow, conscionable backmost from showing the bid to immoderate 6,000 teenagers successful San Francisco — young radical who, by and large, had a overmuch antithetic absorption than their elders to the depictions of online bullying, body-image issues, partying, hooking up and FOMO culture.

These teens were sometimes gasping and talking to the screen, laughing astatine points, afloat immersed, afloat relating, adjacent feeling nostalgic for TikTok trends that were popping 3 years ago.

In 1 episode, teen Sydney Shear is having a substance speech with a feline Greenfield describes arsenic “creepy.” We spot the connection helium sends: “Permission to beat.” Right aft she tells him no, the radical of girls sitting down Greenfield screamed, “You cognize helium did anyway!”

“It’s truly fascinating however otherwise adults versus adolescents reacted to the show,” says Klein, present a inferior astatine Vanderbilt. “Adults are terrified by it, but young radical find it funny. It’s similar watching world TV.”

Lauren Greenfield.

(Matt Seidel / For The Times)

Much has changed for these “Social Studies” subjects since Greenfield stopped filming successful 2022. How could it not? The years instantly pursuing precocious schoolhouse usually bring astir aggravated maturation and alteration and, hopefully, a small maturity. The satellite astir them is different. Palisades Charter High School, which galore of the students successful the bid attended, was heavy damaged successful the January wildfires. (“The show’s similar a clip capsule,” says Gelfond, a Pali High grad. “Looking back, the bid is adjacent much peculiar now.”)

Some things haven’t changed astatine all, though. Technology remains addictive, they each agree. Even erstwhile you are alert that the algorithms beryllium to snare your clip and attention, it tin beryllium hard to halt scrolling, the self-soothing starring to numbness and deepening insecurities.

“You tin person a greater knowing astir the effects, but it inactive pulls you in,” says Brown, who, similar Gelfond and Cooper, has worked astatine teen intelligence wellness hotlines. “It’s hard to enactment distant from what is fundamentally our lifelines.”

Which is 1 crushed wherefore they each spot the worth successful the Los Angeles Unified School District’s cellphone ban, which went into effect successful February.

“The pull-away from tech lone works if it applies to everyone,” Klein says. “When a full radical doesn’t person access, that’s erstwhile the magic happens. You’re going to commencement to link with the radical successful beforehand of you due to the fact that ...” She pauses, smiling. “I mean, you privation to beryllium engaging with something, right?”

Then you person clip to bash things similar work and lick jigsaw puzzles with friends, 2 hobbies Klein says she has taken up again precocious successful a conscious effort to disengage from her phone. Reclaiming your time, she says, tin lone enactment if you’ve got a plan.

If the takeaway from the bid was that parents couldn’t afloat comprehend however exertion shapes and defines their teens’ lives (“They’re the guinea pig generation,” Greenfield notes), watching “Social Studies,” either unneurotic oregon alone, has served arsenic a speech starter.

“I person ever had a precise unfastened narration with my parents,” Gelfond says, “but the mode this truly explains societal media has led to eightfold much transparency.”

“It made maine much grateful for the mode my parents navigated each this,” Klein adds. “I thought they were overstepping boundaries, trying to support maine excessively much. And I deliberation this amusement validated that they did a truly large job. Because we were the archetypal generation, they were benignant of flying blind.”

Gelfond, left, and Klein, right, articulation 1 of the radical discussions successful “Social Studies.”

(Lauren Greenfield / INSTITUTE)

Now Klein wonders what she’d bash otherwise if she ever has kids. She started connected Instagram astatine 12. If she could spell back, she’d astir apt hold that entry, adjacent though Klein says it present seems mean for kids to articulation the app erstwhile they crook 8 oregon 9.

So what would beryllium the perfect starter age?

“Maybe I’m brainsick for saying this, but I deliberation it should beryllium 16,” Brown says. Greenfield nods her head, noting Australia precocious banned societal media — Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X — for children nether 16.

“I got connected Instagram erstwhile I was 10 oregon 11, and I had nary thought of the satellite that I had conscionable gained entree to,” Brown continues. “You should hold until you summation captious reasoning skills. Sixteen, 17, 18, maybe.”

“It is the extremity of childhood,” Greenfield says. “You get that telephone and everything that comes with it, and it is the extremity of innocence.”

In that respect, Greenfield sees “Social Studies” successful speech with “Adolescence,” the Netflix constricted bid astir a 13-year-old lad suspected of sidesplitting a girl. The lad had been actively exploring incel civilization online.

“What’s scary astir ‘Adolescence’ is however did they not cognize helium was progressive successful thing truthful terrible,” Greenfield says. “But it makes sense. That’s the satellite we unrecorded successful now.”