The Australia Government introduced a minimum age of 16 for social media accounts in December last year. The UK Government is currently debating the same policy. Its consultation process on raising the minimum age for social media has recently closed, with ministers expected to announce their next steps within weeks.

A fiercely clever film by Arts & Sciences, and directed by director, David Dearlove, supports that minimum age. The campaign, for Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC), a grassroots movement advocating for age-restricted smartphone access, aims to rally families, schools and policymakers to support its cause and create meaningful cultural and political change.

The film, created pro bono, is not your usual didactic, statistic-driven PSA. Instead, it takes its audience back into a 1990s video store, where a father watches the store worker make horrible suggestions for video watching over the weekend – from manosphere influencers to disordered eating primers – the same suggestions children and young teens are finding without parental supervision online today.

The idea is to jolt viewers into wondering about how we got to accepting the viewing young people see online today.

 

Credits:
Client: Smartphone Free Childhood
Creative & Production: Arts & Sciences
Creative & Director:David Dearlove
Producer: Kwok Yau
Managing Director: James Bland
Executive Producer: Charlie Orr
Director Of Photography: Linda Wu

Post Production & VFX: Black Kite
Editing: Stitch
Sound: 750mph
Music: Twenty Below Music