In Middle School, ‘You’re Trying to Build a Parachute as You’re Falling’

Social media has now been around long enough that teens who grew up with it are now adults who can make art about that experience. If stereotypes about young people and the internet were true, one might expect such art to be narcissistic or shallow or Instagrammy. But Eighth Grade, a new movie written and directed by Bo Burnham, a former YouTube star, is generous and deep, and makes room for all the facets of its protagonist’s self, not just the shiniest, most camera-ready ones.

In the film, a 13-year-old girl named Kayla is feeling her way through the dark forest of middle-school social life. On-screen, the scenery keeps changing: How should she act in the classroom? At a popular classmate’s pool party? At the mall with a new group of friends? And is she a totally different person on the internet, in the vlogs she makes in which she offers advice and pep talks? “Being yourself can be hard,”, “and it’s like, ‘Aren’t I always being myself?’” Kayla’s sweet and stumbling attempts to answer that question in these