If you have not yet caught on to the tempting language considered “brainrot” or you don’t have a 100-day snap streak with your best friend, can you really consider yourself a Gen-Zer? Through the ways in which we interact and set up a digital social network, social media is a part of our lifestyles that many take pride in. That is, until it shows up in film and literature. Actively seeing phone use within other forms of media does not feel representative of how our generation interacts with social media. That’s why the statement “they don’t make movies like they used to” is always tossed around; the attempt at representing our culture shoves the reality of our culture into our faces. 

Here’s the reality: the portrayal of phones in films and books—even if slightly exaggerated—is generally accurate. So, if it’s accurate, why is it so disturbing? When we curl up on the couch to watch a 2-hour movie, we’re waiting for something that will make our popcorn-eating jaws drop with suspense and anticipation. Watching a character stare at their phone waiting for their love interest to snap back or gain that new high score on Block Blast is not going to do that. Consider your favorite movies—whether they were created before the digital revolution or a year ago, they probably have something in common: they don’t follow the story of a technology-starved protagonist. In fact, most acclaimed movies tend to have less than a minute worth of phone screen time. There certainly is tasteful phone use in cinema; it just needs to be supplemented with a substantial plot and effortless dialogue. Our lifestyles today are simply not cinema-worthy and there is no better way to realise that than to be faced with two hours of it transparently shoved in your face. So, the next time you find a movie with a modern take embarrassing, take it as self-critique. 

However, we’ll cut you some momentary slack when we say that the cinema world definitely hasn’t figured out our beloved brainrot and slang. You’re right, there absolutely is something off-putting whenever a character verbalizes modern slang, saying things like “slay” or “cap.” But then again, maybe there was also something off-putting when we used the same terms in our own lives. We live in an era of prominent microlanguage, where slang quickly reaches its popularity and is then rejected months later. The rapidity of microlanguage is the same as that of microtrends; by the time they reach the screens or print, they’ve already been deemed outdated and embarrassing. No matter how often you throw around the “sigma” label now (if that term hasn’t already expired), hearing it in a movie one year from now will probably hurt your soul. The attempt to use modern slang doesn’t hit the same as Gretchen Wieners’ iconic “That’s so fetch,” or Cher’s “As if!” where the slang holds timeless value. Filmmakers who are too focused on representing modern language are simply wasting time on an item that will be gone in a month. 

Smartphones in film have transitioned from plot-advancing devices to a means of calling out the obsession younger generations have with technology. In film, smartphones now deliver a warning to our youth: your lives are wasted so long as you depend on your device. The classic films and literature we hold dear tell stories of suffering, love, faith, and bravery, starkly contrasting the lives we are used to living today. Why don’t we live as ambitiously and spontaneously as the protagonists of our favorite films? Well, for one, we are in Shorewood, Wisconsin, and for two, we are too absorbed in our social media presence to have cinema-worthy interactions. 

According to Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step in recovery is to acknowledge that you are addicted. It’s common to feel defensive when older generations insult the attachment we have to our devices and how out-of-touch they are from the world. The irony is that we insult the teenagers on screen accessing their social media, using Snapchat filters like Hunter from Ginny & Georgia, who are supposed to be representing how we function today. We need our phones in our lives, but refuse to admit that fact out of fearing the reality that, in order to break our addiction, we’d need to restructure how we operate on a day-to-day basis. When consuming literature and film, we want to see what a normal interaction looks like in hopes of mimicking it in our real lives. And as much as we laugh at and critique the way youth in modern media use Gen-Z language, we are humored by our own dangerous reality. Film is an expression of art and humanity. It stands to represent our values and trends. If it’s so easy to critique the content shown in films, maybe it’s time to be critical of our own habits.