Writer, comedian and self-confessed Twitter addict David Baddiel is exploring the impact social media has on people’s behaviour both on and offline. 

Baddiel recognises that there are positive reasons to use social media such as revolutionising communication, pushing social change forward and highlighting important issues.

However, there are also negatives to these platforms and areas where outrage and angry exchanges dominate.

This negativity can often spill into real life, leading Baddiel to question if the lines are becoming blurred between our online and offline worlds. 

Baddiel looks at his own social media behaviour, analysing the aggressive and hateful tweets he is sent and his brain’s responses to those messages in an MRI scan.

Plus, Baddiel goes cold turkey and gives up all social media for a fortnight to test if it will lead to any kind of enlightenment. 

In order to further investigate how these platforms affect us, he speaks to prolific users, writers and experts, who both love and hate social media.

The rise of social media has also led to cancel culture, a type of instant justice handed out by social media, but is it a different type of mass democracy or simply mob rule?

The dark and unregulated world of fake accounts and bots, which often spread misinformation and uncertainty, is also explored. 

Baddiel meets those whose lives have been ruined by online trolls and speaks to a TikTokker who shockingly had his house set on fire.

David Baddiel commented: “David Bowie, in 1999, said, of the internet, this will change everything. As ever, Bowie was a prophet. Because what seems like just a means of communication has completely changed how we communicate. 

“Social media in particular, seems to have raised the temperature of every type of utterance. I’m hoping this film will add to the understanding of all this and not the anger. But I’m still expecting to be shouted at online about it, of course.”