Is This Really What We Want For Childhood?

As the UK Government debates raising the minimum age for social media to 16, the grassroots movement Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) releases a film to rally families and policymakers around children’s smartphone and social media use.

Created and directed by Arts & Sciences' David Dearlove and Executive Produced by Charlie Orr, the pro bono film confronts one of the most urgent challenges facing families today: that in little over 15 years, smartphones and social media have fundamentally reshaped childhood, and the evidence that they are doing more harm than good has become impossible to ignore.
Rather than focus on technical explanations and statistics, the film uses humour and nostalgia to make a complex issue instantly relatable. By placing today’s online content in the familiar setting of a 1990s video shop, it encourages parents and policymakers to look at the status quo with fresh eyes and ask a simple question: when did we start accepting things online that we’d never accept anywhere else?
In the film, a father and his two kids are in a Blockbuster-style video store looking for their next rental. When the store employee starts suggesting titles, it becomes readily apparent that the recommended films are promoting disordered eating, misogyny, bullying, and befriending predators, underlining the real dangers of what children are consuming online for hours on end.

"Children deserve better protection online," says director David Dearlove. "And as always, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, so we knew that comedy was the fastest route to making this message stick and generating a national conversation."
The film arrives at a pivotal moment. The UK Government’s consultation on raising the minimum age for social media has recently closed, with ministers expected to announce their next steps within weeks. Smartphone Free Childhood is a grassroots movement bringing together families, schools and communities to spark a national conversation about smartphones, social media and childhood – and turn that conversation into meaningful cultural and political change.
“Childhood has changed faster in the last fifteen years than at any point in living memory,” says SFC co-founder Joe Ryrie. “Yet none of us were consulted. We weren’t asked whether we wanted smartphones, social media algorithms, and the business models behind them to become such a powerful force in children’s lives. This film is an invitation to pause and ask a simple question: Is this really the kind of childhood we want?”
With the cause hitting close to home for many of the production team, who are parents themselves, Arts & Sciences London produced the film pro bono, reflecting the company's commitment to using creativity and storytelling in support of issues with meaningful social impact.