Perri Peltz
Filmmakers · Can't Look Away (2025)
Co-director of Can't Look Away, bringing the families suing social-media platforms over harm to their children onto the screen.
Perri Peltz is a documentary filmmaker who co-directed Can't Look Away (2025) with Matthew O'Neill. The film follows cases brought by the Social Media Victims Law Center, in which families pursue legal action against major platforms over harm they say their children suffered. The documentary follows the real families and litigation at the center of the growing legal reckoning with social-media companies, putting specific faces and stories behind the broader debate about platform responsibility for harm to young users.
Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.
WORKS IN THE LIBRARY (8)
VIDEOS
"Can't Look Away": New Documentary on Online Safety Examines the Dark Side of Social Media
In this April 2025 Democracy Now! interview (aired in two segments), co-director Matthew O'Neill and Social Media Victims Law Center attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett discuss Can't Look Away, the documentary O'Neill made with Perri Peltz. O'Neill says the research behind the film revealed harm "so much worse than we ever imagined," and the pair describe platform recommendation systems as capable of steering teenagers toward material involving self-harm, sextortion, or drug contacts, citing a case in which a 16-year-old's short-video feed shifted toward suicide-related content. Marquez-Garrett says her firm represents thousands of families pursuing claims against major platforms. The interview also references Australia's under-16 social media restriction as a policy comparison. TechKids Foundation treats this interview as the filmmakers' own account of what they found while making the documentary, not as an independent clinical or research finding.
Perri Peltz and Matthew O'Neill on Can't Look Away — Good Day New York
On April 7, 2025, filmmakers Perri Peltz and Matthew O'Neill appeared on Fox 5 New York's Good Day New York with hosts Curt Menefee and Rosanna Scotto to discuss their documentary Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media. The segment introduced a general local-news audience to the film's central subject: a legal team representing families who say their children were harmed after encounters with algorithm-driven content on major social platforms, including cases involving self-harm and exploitation. As a short-format morning-show appearance, the segment functions primarily as public awareness-raising for the documentary's themes rather than a detailed accounting of any specific case. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance to document the filmmakers' broader media outreach around the film's release, not as a source of new factual claims beyond what the documentary itself presents.
Jacob Silverman, Matthew O'Neill & Perri Peltz — Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast
On the June 30, 2025 episode of Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast, Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz discuss Can't Look Away, describing the documentary as an examination of what they call technology's grip on children's attention and safety. The conversation, part of a political-news podcast that also features a separate segment with journalist Jacob Silverman, covers the filmmakers' motivation for making the film and the Social Media Victims Law Center litigation it follows. As a long-form interview aimed at a general political-news audience, the episode adds the filmmakers' own framing of the project's stakes rather than new case-specific detail. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance to document the filmmakers' public advocacy following the film's release, consistent with the association-language framing used elsewhere in this library.
"Can't Look Away": Q&A with the Director of the Film Putting Social Media Under the Spotlight for Harming Kids
In this August 29, 2025 Q&A published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, co-director Matthew O'Neill discusses Can't Look Away and the Bloomberg reporting by Olivia Carville that inspired it. O'Neill contrasts the smaller share of teenagers who smoked cigarettes a generation ago with today's near-universal teen social media use, citing an estimate that roughly two-thirds of teens spend more than three hours a day on these platforms, to argue the scale of exposure is historically unusual. He says the film aims to prompt what he calls "shame-free conversations" between parents and children rather than blame, and calls on technology-industry leaders to direct their resources toward child-safety design. TechKids Foundation cites this Q&A as the filmmaker's own account of the film's intent and the comparisons he draws, not as independently verified research.
'Can't Look Away' Filmmakers on Harm From Social Media
In this Bloomberg Television interview, published to YouTube on November 5, 2025, the filmmakers behind Can't Look Away discuss the harms to young people documented in their film. Airing several months after the documentary's initial release, the segment revisits the Social Media Victims Law Center litigation and the filmmakers' account of algorithm-driven content reaching teenagers, aimed at a business and general-news audience following the film's continued distribution on Bloomberg Media platforms. TechKids Foundation includes this interview to document the filmmakers' ongoing public discussion of the film following its release. As with the film itself, the interview presents the platforms' design choices and the outcomes described by families as associated patterns reported by the filmmakers and their sources, not as an independently verified causal claim.
STUDIES
Bloomberg Doc Reveals Social Media, Teen Drug Deaths Link
This Hollywood Reporter news article, published ahead of the film's release, previews Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media, the documentary co-directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz. Reporter Etan Vlessing describes the film's account of Social Media Victims Law Center litigation against platforms including Snapchat, and its focus on cases where encrypted, disappearing-message features are described as easing contact between counterfeit-pill dealers and teenagers, a pattern the filmmakers link to overdose deaths. The article quotes Peltz calling the pattern part of a broader public-health concern and O'Neill saying platform companies choose profit over addressing harm to children. O'Neill also compares the case for platform safety regulation to historical auto-industry seatbelt requirements. TechKids Foundation cites this piece for its documented account of the filmmakers' own framing and the film's release details, not as independent proof of platform liability.
Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media — Arts Intel Report
This Air Mail review, by critic Alessandra Stanley and published the day after the film's release, assesses Can't Look Away, co-directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz. Stanley summarizes the film's account of Social Media Victims Law Center lawyers representing families whose children died after contact with dealers who used disappearing messages to sell counterfeit pills, or after exposure to sustained self-harm-related content and sexual-exploitation schemes on major platforms. The review frames the companies' design choices as comparable in seriousness to historical tobacco and firearms harms — the critic's own framing, not a TechKids Foundation claim. TechKids Foundation cites this review for its independent account of the film's content and reception, while keeping the association between platform design and the harms described strictly to what the film and its subjects report, not a single-cause claim.