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FX’s ‘Social Studies’ Is a Devastating Exploration of Teenhood in the Age of Social Media: TV Review
Lauren Greenfield's "Social Studies" follows Los Angeles teens coming of age in the era of social media and being chronically online.
Throughout the series’ five episodes, using her camera, screen recordings of the teens’ phones and footage from aspiring documentarian Jonathan, a Pacific Palisades student who runs the school’s video program, Greenfield unveils the most personal and vulnerable aspects of her subjects’ lives, which range from joyous to heart-wrenching and appalling. While some of the themes, including body image, perfectionism and sexual exploration, are topics that adolescents across the decades have confronted, the magnitude, misinformation and compulsion to record every single aspect of their lives make the adventure of being a teen during this time so unique. To counter this pressure to be chronically online, Greenfield includes recordings from her intermittent cell phone-free roundtables, which provide young people in the docuseries with a safe and honest space to connect face-to-face.
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