News Investigation

Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media — Arts Intel Report

Apr 2025 🇺🇸 Air Mail

Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.

Outside the U.S.? Find your local helpline at findahelpline.com.

This Air Mail review, by critic Alessandra Stanley and published the day after the film's release, assesses Can't Look Away, co-directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz. Stanley summarizes the film's account of Social Media Victims Law Center lawyers representing families whose children died after contact with dealers who used disappearing messages to sell counterfeit pills, or after exposure to sustained self-harm-related content and sexual-exploitation schemes on major platforms. The review frames the companies' design choices as comparable in seriousness to historical tobacco and firearms harms — the critic's own framing, not a TechKids Foundation claim. TechKids Foundation cites this review for its independent account of the film's content and reception, while keeping the association between platform design and the harms described strictly to what the film and its subjects report, not a single-cause claim.

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CITATION

Stanley, Alessandra. "Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media." Air Mail, Issue No. 299, April 5, 2025. https://airmail.news/issues/2025-4-5/cant-look-away

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