YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE (SXSW 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale
Your Attention Please is a studied, engaging, albeit terrifying documentary about the potential benefits and numerous harms of social media. In it, director Sara Robin lays out where we are with social media, in terms of regulation and impact on society, and how that might be an indication of the potential benefits and damage AI could be globally to our communal future.
Robin approaches this examination by enlisting some of the most renowned experts in the field, as well as ethicists researchers, professors, authors, and those directly impacted by the negative aspects of its proliferation. There’s the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who brought to the world’s attention the fact that internal research by the company knew the platform was aware of its harmful societal effects, yet not only persisted in prioritizing profits but further leaned into their damaging algorithms. Your Attention Please shows that corporations are using social media to leverage its users as products, without concern for reduction in attention span, increased low self esteem, and even higher numbers of kids with thoughts of suicide. In fact, parents of children lost to suicide as a result of online bullying or manipulation are featured prominently in the film, which is equally heartbreaking and inspiring. Their loss has driven them to work to change the laws governing the companies making billions from social media, Managing their unchecked power and exploitation of younger users would benefit us all. Unfortunately, so far money has trumped morality, and that same profit motive is driving AI companies.
The ethicists, authors, and tech innovators featured offer insights into how we can change the online landscape for better safety and for a better future for our kids and ourselves. Particularly compelling are Trisha Prahbu, founder of ReThink, a company with an app that filters the user’s comments before posting in an attempt to alter potential bullying. Her app led to an over 90% reduction in harmful comments by those users. The founders of The Offline Club, which has more and more chapters around the world, are also making a difference.
“We are collapsing imagination”, says another online ethicist. “AI is an asteroid hurtling towards earth, and not only are we not trying to stop it, we’re the ones creating that asteroid”. Your Attention Please does a wonderful, and even optimistic job of showing we can stop that asteroid, making the film essential viewing.
4 1/2 out of 5 stars.
