Your Attention Please, the new documentary directed by Sara Robin, is the kind of film that stops you cold. It premiered at SXSW in March 2026 to strong reviews — called "one of the most vitally important films of the decade" by Region Free — and it deserves every bit of that attention. This is not a cold, clinical analysis of the attention economy. It is a deeply human story about what we stand to lose, and what many are already fighting to reclaim. Watch the trailer here.
Our relationship with technology — characterized by compulsive checking, endless scrolling, and an alarming inability to simply be present — was not an accident. These platforms were engineered to capture and hold our attention because our attention is the product being sold.
MIT Professor Sherry Turkle offers one of the film's most powerful insights: the unstructured downtime in our lives — moments of boredom, idle thought, staring out a window — is not wasted time. It is essential time. These are the moments when our brains engage the default mode network, the mental space where we build our sense of self. When we fill every spare moment with screens, we are depriving ourselves — and especially our children — of the space needed to develop into fully realized human beings.
No research data hits quite as hard as a mother's face.
Kristin Bride is one of the most powerful figures in this film — a voice impossible to forget. In 2020, she lost her 16-year-old son Carson to cyberbullying on anonymous Snapchat apps. Rather than retreat into grief, she transformed that loss into relentless advocacy: co-founding the Online Harms Prevention Workgroup, filing a landmark class action lawsuit against anonymous apps, testifying before Congress, and founding the Carson J. Bride Effect. When asked how she keeps going, her answer was simple and inspiring: by helping others.
Former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy speaks movingly about how Kristin's testimony personally moved him — a reminder that advocacy works. Showing up, telling your story, putting a human face on a systemic problem changes minds, policy, and lives.
Frances Haugen — the Facebook Whistleblower — embodies a different kind of courage. She came forward with tens of thousands of internal documents proving the company knew its platform was harming children and chose profit anyway. Her integrity is a model for the transparency we must demand. Platforms may not be responsible for every word a user posts, but they are absolutely responsible for the algorithms they build and the harm those algorithms cause. Attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett and the Social Media Victims Law Center are doing the hard, expensive work of holding them accountable in court — and that work matters enormously.
The film refuses to end in despair — and that refusal feels earned.
Trisha Prabhu invented ReThink at age 13: a simple tool that pauses users before they post something harmful and asks them to reconsider. More than 90% chose not to post. As Trisha puts it, the tool reminds users of their humanity. She also made an important point during the Q&A: there is a difference between liking something and being addicted to it. What social media companies have built is addiction by design.
Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology makes a sobering but clarifying observation: social media wanted your attention. Artificial intelligence wants your attachment. The stakes are rising. And yet Harris, like the film itself, remains hopeful — because the cultural shift is already underway. Schools are going phone-free.
Your Attention Please is a call to action for all of us — parents, educators, advocates, and everyday citizens. Whether that means talking honestly with your kids, contacting your elected representatives, or supporting organizations holding Big Tech accountable, there is a role for everyone in this movement.
At American Shield, our mission is to help people navigate a rapidly changing technological world with clarity and support. The questions this film raises are at the heart of everything we do. Watch it. Share it. Talk about it — because our attention, and the attention of our children, is worth fighting for.
Click here to learn more about upcoming film screenings around the country.
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