Available on DVD now

Beeban Kidron / UK / 2013 / 90 mins

People are becoming increasingly reliant on the Internet, to read this review you have to be online, but what are the social consequences of this World Wide Web fixation? Beeban Kidron’s revealing documentary wonders whether this explosion of freely available information and easy connectivity is really ensnaring some teenagers into obsession.

Through a series of frank and startling interviews Kidron demonstrates the Internet’s importance to a selection of youths: the homosexual who feels able to come out on Twitter but not tell his parents, or the girl so distressed without her Blackberry she resorts to prostitution to replace the lost device. These candid anecdotes are intersected with explanations of how the technology actually works and talking heads with academics that try to analyse the reasons and the societal ramifications.

While the overall point – that some teenagers spend too much time online – is probably true, the insinuatingly negative approach feels manipulative. Repeated ominous music and disturbing sound effects accompanying long shots of exposed hardware, conjure feelings of discomfort towards the pictured humming cables. Although the high statistics about daily usage of Facebook or the vast amounts of personal data collected by Google are alarming, they’re not particularly revelatory, just quantifying what many already suspected. The often engaging content doesn’t really bring anything new to the debate it’s trying to initiate and feels like more of a warning to younger viewers.

Kidron’s focus on the young also feels short-sighted when adults can be just as guilty. One astute contributor admits her child probably picked up the habit of being glued to a screen, from her own example of working at home. The pornography ‘addicted’ boys who believe their vocation has built their expectations of women unrealistically high, are a product of a world where scantily clad, photo-shopped females are used to sell anything and everything. In showing the extent to which today’s youth have become dependent upon the Internet, Kidron is really addressing the larger issue of, what is it about society that provoked, enables and encourages this dependency?