Film review: InRealLife offers a warning about the virtual world

 

Anthony Quinn
Thursday 19 September 2013 15:12 EDT
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Ah, The InterWeb: so much to answer for. Beeban Kidron's smart and serious documentary offers a survey of the virtual world's creeping infiltration into our lives – and a warning.

The film strikes a balance between candid interviews with teenagers (eg. a funny-disturbing chat with a boy who likes surfing porn) and a lot of academic talking heads explaining how we're all going to hell in a handcart, or perhaps a handheld.

In between, there's footage of monstrous cables and tubes snaking here, there and everywhere, all soundtracked to the lowering clank of a horror movie.

Amid the finger-wagging against Google and the sad stories of cyberbullying, a more abstract issue becomes apparent: we are raising a generation of people who don't know how to be alone anymore.

They won't be interested in this film, but I wonder if the adult audience it's aimed at will take note, either. They're all too busy on the net.

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