New series Under the Influence is rolling out across the NZ Herald online, exploring the algorithms and technology shaping young New Zealander's lives.
Across six episodes, the creators travelled up and down the motu, gathering the lived experience of Gen Z and speaking with those at the forefront of these issues. While the series shines a light on some serious risks and challenges, it's ultimately a hopeful one. It asks how we can rebuild the ecosystem around childhood and adolescence to better support young people as they navigate this new reality.
There is a strong team of women from the north and south behind the show, including Producer/Director/Wiftie Nadia Maxwell & drama director Liv McClymont.
New episodes are dropping Mondays and Thursdays and you can watch them HERE
Nadia kindly dropped tools and shared her insights into the project, read on for our WIFT NZ Q&A!
KR: An important and necessary kōrero - what inspired you to make this series?
NADIA MAXWELL: We are facing the largest epidemic of teen mental health, ever. As a filmmaker and mother to teenagers, the stories of harm weren’t just statistics, they were all around me.
KR: How challenging was the journey to release - what support did you get and what hurdles did you need to clear getting it across the line?
NM: It’s always a challenge right! However our partners on this one were the NZHerald who have been fantastic and in behind this for a long time.
As part of this research, I set up an experiment: I set up accounts as a 13-year-old girl across TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat and filmed the experience. Where prompted I gave my interests as animals, health & fitness. I actively searched using words like “kittens” to reinforce to the algorithm the harmless content I was seeking. I thought it might take a week for disturbing content to crop up... it took 22 minutes and 15 seconds for the first suicide related video to appear on TikTok. Despite trying to redirect the algorithm, distressing content in the "For you" feed increased to 65% by Day 3. It was a harrowing experiment.
I took a short video of that experiment to the Herald and they ran it on the front page and as the lead weekend story. It had huge reach which really motivated me to keep going with this mahi.
KR: Storytelling like this must be so revealing and nourishing - you embark on the journey and many other stories and tangents reveal themselves - was this the case here?
NM: Yes and with this one a big factor is that it’s such a rapidly moving landscape. One example of this is Big Tech is moving from the attention-economy to the affection-economy with the rapid roll out of unregulated AI chatbots so we actually ended up swapping an episode out so we could cover AI companion bots.
KR: How did you find working with the rangitahi?
NM: Our Gen Z rangatahi are the heart of this series. We travelled up and down the motu to hear their lived experience. They are all amazing!! And give me hope that despite the unprecedented harms they are having to navigate that this generation will find a way a through… but we can’t expect them to navigate these harms alone.
KR: You are all dealing with some confronting and often distressing subject matter, how important was the self-care and care of fellow crew, and of course the rangitahi and families who shared their experiences?
NM: We engaged a psychologist to support our participants and crew across this series. It’s the first time in my career I’ve had this support and it was incredible. Our psychologist ran a workshop for us at the start of production, created a bespoke approach for our series and resources we could share with our crew. She was then also on call for one-to-ones for anyone who needed it. From the resources there were some really valuable ideas, that I know I’ll carry on to other projects - like pacing your trauma load and to be careful about what you expose yourself to outside of work hours. if you’ve had a heavy day with some big interviews or research, don’t sit down and doom scroll the news or it all starts to pile on top and feels overwhelming.
KR: How do you see this series connecting with audiences, and what's your hope when it comes to impact?
NM: My biggest hope is that parents will watch this series with their teens and it will be the catalyst for conversations. It’s definitely what happened with my two teens. In speaking with young people across our research it became apparent there is a knowledge gap between what young people are encountering online and what we as parents and adults think they’re navigating. We wanted to help bridge that gap to drive more conversation.
Click HERE to watch the trailer for UNDER THE INFLUENCE