'Your Attention Please'; Gino at the Movies

I am testifying here today to bring a face to the harms occurring every day. I don't think that we have to have any of the big tech firms decide how we are going to interact with technology. Let's see this as a movement. It's all a movement. It is a movement. You are going to have to decide if you want to fight. So we're talking about Your Attention, Please. It's being called a must-see documentary. The film focuses on the impact of social media on youth safety and mental health. So, Gino, you talk with the director and also a parent advocate who's part of this project. Yes. And yeah, I believe this is a must see movie. The the mother is Kristen Bride. She lost her 16 year old son. She'll tell you what happened. It's just horrible. And the director is Sarah Robin. When you make a movie, you want to affect something. You want to make people think you want to move people. You certainly have done it with this film. Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot to hear. You know, I think with this topic, so much of what we're wrestling with is it can be so abstract, right? It's quite invisible. It's quite difficult to wrap our heads around. So when we set out to make that film and my co-filmer, Jack Lemay, really played a big part in that, we were always asking, what's the emotional through line here? Like, what are we feeling as we talk about this? And I'm very happy to hear that it resonates. Yes. Kristen, I have to talk about you. You did not set out to become an advocate, to become active as you are. And you had a horrible tragedy with your with your beautiful son, Carson. Yes. In fact, I despised public speaking before this happened. We lost our son, Carson, in 2020 to suicide after he was viciously cyber bullied over Snapchat's anonymous apps. and I had a decision to make, you know, do I just accept this and cry in bed all day or do I fight back? And I chose to fight back and I have not regretted it. Well, I know that he is so proud of you and what you've done. Sarah, a lot of times we watch a documentary and it's like, there's no solution, but there is kind of a solution that is happening around the world. Can you tell everyone about that? Yeah. And that was really, you know, the goal with the film was to start showing these solutions so that we realize like this is actually something we can fix we always say technology has been designed and that means it can be redesigned and and i'm confident that it will be redesigned um you know we're seeing extraordinary change happening um from uh countries banning social media for under 16 year olds like australia um to young people actually saying you know what i don't want to be on this 24 7 so you see that in in our film and offline club um but i will say even in the united states where it may be um you know once you watch the film it can be quite frustrating to see that um legislation at the federal level uh has been stalled and and you know was had such uh bipartisan support and still couldn't make it over the finish line but even here we're seeing a lot of movement on a state level phones are coming out of schools um at unprecedented levels most states now have some kind of um phone free schools legislation so change is happening and i think at this point um it's up to us to uh really get involved and make sure that that change is actually meaningful and not just uh something on paper you know i love how the director mentioned obviously that change is happening not just at the federal level but the state's level in schools out of schools uh to that end are you seeing from the conversation you had with these two women uh more people broaching such a sensitive subject now and aren't afraid to tackle that Well, when you go through a tragedy like that, you can do something like she said and sit back and just, you know, never get up out of bed. But she was active and there was a bill that was so close to being passed that would prevent kids from posting anonymously. This poor boy that took his life, 100 people who were anonymous just were brutal on him. It's just awful. But there's a young woman who came up with an app. She was actually on Shark Tank. And the name of that app is Rethink. You had me looking it up, actually, because it was interesting. And she noticed that 93% of kids, this app will notice if someone's writing something mean and horrible, it will pause and say, think about this. Do you really want to send this? And in 93% of the cases, they did not send the mean message. Like, it just, I can't imagine being a young person today, but, you know, it's two people like this who are getting this word out there. So what is that person out there who sees your film? what can they do so you know i think people often want like one answer right like this is the thing you do and then we're good what we're showing in the film i think is really there's lots of answers and depending who you are there's different ways to get involved and i i always want to say never discredit the small changes um i think you know getting back into a habit of having spaces that are unplugged having spaces where we decide you know what we're going to put the phone down we're going to be fully present with each other is so important because we barely get that anymore in this day and age so I encourage every family out there bring more offline life into your every day but also you know write your representatives make this an election issue we are really at a point where we need meaningful legislation to to really enshrine this and not just make this a patchwork solution that we have in the states right now but like you know have have a long lasting change and make these platforms safer by design um and one thing that we strongly advocate for is not just banning young people from these apps but actually working to make these apps safe not just for young people but truly for all of us right it affects us adults too um so let's let's make this an issue that our lawmakers uh can't afford to ignore there's this thing made this yeah it's making everybody aware of how big of an issue and how detrimental, as we're saying, cyberbullying is. There's this trend going on around the world of these parties where kids come together and they put their phones away and that for two hours or three hours, they don't use their phones at all. I really encourage that. There's no Milwaukee area chapter. I looked it up, did not see that. But I know when I hear these suicides of young people, it breaks my heart because you know what? We've all had tough times in our lives. But 10 years later you might not even remember what it was that was so bad you know talk to your family talk to somebody about it it's just it's not worth it not only taking your own life but the pain that you leave for those who are left behind this movie is really special and i really encourage people to see it i think this movie too is going to resonate with a lot of people because i think parents are really going through it right now in terms of how do they manage all of this when we were growing up you know it was like other kids other parents but those kids and those parents had a name and And so now when you have this force that is social media that has that is faceless and nameless, it's just it's it's hard to take on. Right. We were there was bullying when I went to school, but it was face to face. Now it's anonymous. And when it comes at like, you know, that poor kid getting 100 messages, he left the sweetest message about that. He was starting a job at Papa John's. And you know what? I'll make a pizza for you. And he got brutalized. That's wrong. You know, this has to get fixed. And I'm really hopeful this movie might help get that change. It reminds me that, you know, talking about this topic, this is why my parents, like, required my sister and brother and I to give them our passwords to social media. It wasn't so that they could just, like, I don't know, ruin our lives as we thought of young people. But they want to see what other people are doing. And if they need to intervene, how can they do so? What help do they need to provide? Should that become the case? Yes. But that is exactly why my parents had all of our passwords growing up, because of social media. You've got to tell your kids to step up, too, for that front. Yes, exactly. That's right. And that rethink app, if in 93 percent of the cases, kids did not send that mean message. That's pretty effective. You know, give that a try. Just making you forcing you to pause and say, do I really know what I'm doing? Exactly. And just, you know, I broke down crying and I'm close to it now because that kid was had this innocent, beautiful face and was brutalized. And it's like, why would you want to do that to someone? you know think about what you're doing it's just anyway and you know being the teen is tough you know and to be compounded with a troll and yeah it's horrible so it's understandable yeah yeah thank you thanks yeah we'll be right back