Unfortunately one of the worst documentaries I have ever seen, it rarely talks seriously and instead of that, it often just likes to pretend that its audience has no basic clue of how digital systems work which is probably true but what worries me is that in simplifying the language they're using, it's creating hyperbolic expressions in the audience's mind without telling them that there's a more articulate vocabulary for talking about surveillance capitalism, algorithms and data. By that what I mean is that it's fine for people to talk about "social media and tech companies controlling us and manipulating us" but when you tell them just that and some super basic explanations then the audience can likely think "oh so that's what's going on, ok cool" and they can just leave
It doesn't give you any helpful advice, they don't talk about any healthy alternatives or solutions except turning off notifications lol
Perhaps the biggest problem with this documentary is it's uneven directing and not a good sense of purpose or pacing. There's really not a lot of new information, it's just some new information that's dotted between talking around some of the more basic stuff, there's even a animated sequence for some reason and the dramatization that is enacted.
Now, I don't know if every docu-drama does this because this is the first one I have seen but tbh it was kind of like the worst piece of filmmaking that I have ever seen. It has no rhythm, much like the whole documentary, it has also no sense of style or flavor. The only purpose that I can discern for them to show a fictionalized character's life is to get us in the minds of people going through social media addiction and that's fair but like, dude, we are all going through social media addiction all the time. We know the symptoms even if we don't understand the disease and I thought a lot of runtime could have been cut out of the dramatization and used for something more purposeful.
Overral: I think 4/10. What I will say is that this is extremely extremely accessible because it looks high-quality and passes of as serious and of course that it's a Netflix Original which gives it an important air and yes, it does cover some basic principles of invasion of privacy, the selling of our data and their (tech companies) lack of transparency about what happening inside their digital fortresses, so it does make it sort of worth recommending. Just beaware that there's no danger of drowning her because the water's not that deep
