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Varieties

Mbappe, PSG Coach Face Backlash for Laughing off Private Jet Question

05 September 2022, France, Saint-Germain-En-Laye: Paris Saint-Germain coach Christophe Galtier attends a press conference at Ooredoo Center ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League Group H soccer match against Juventus. (dpa)
05 September 2022, France, Saint-Germain-En-Laye: Paris Saint-Germain coach Christophe Galtier attends a press conference at Ooredoo Center ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League Group H soccer match against Juventus. (dpa)
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Mbappe, PSG Coach Face Backlash for Laughing off Private Jet Question

05 September 2022, France, Saint-Germain-En-Laye: Paris Saint-Germain coach Christophe Galtier attends a press conference at Ooredoo Center ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League Group H soccer match against Juventus. (dpa)
05 September 2022, France, Saint-Germain-En-Laye: Paris Saint-Germain coach Christophe Galtier attends a press conference at Ooredoo Center ahead of Tuesday's UEFA Champions League Group H soccer match against Juventus. (dpa)

Paris St Germain coach Christophe Galtier and striker Kylian Mbappe were facing a backlash on Tuesday for laughing off a question about why the team took a private jet for a short trip to a game in Nantes at the weekend.

"Are you serious, responding like this???," Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted. "Wake up guys???"

Quizzed on PSG's jet trip to Nantes at a news conference on Monday, Galtier and Mbappe looked at each other and the World Cup winner burst out laughing as his coach responded with a quip.

"This morning we talked about it with the company which organizes our trips and we're looking into travelling on sand yachts," Galtier said. Asked for his views on the matter, Mbappe said he did not have any.

A video of their comments immediately went viral, triggering angry responses from social media users, environmentalists and ministers.

Photoshopped memes of Mbappe and Galtier on sand yachts could be seen across social media and the controversy occupied the top three tending topics on Twitter in France on Tuesday.

"I love Mbappe, we can all have the giggles at the least opportune moment and it really was the least opportune moment," Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told BFM TV on Tuesday.

"But we all have to take climate change seriously," he said, adding that Galtier's irony had been "out of place".

PSG were not immediately available for comment.

Nantes is about two hours by high-speed train from Paris.

The use of private jets has been a much-discussed topic both in France and globally this summer, with social media users tracking - and criticizing - their use amid a series of heatwaves, droughts and floods triggered by climate change.

President Emmanuel Macron on Monday told a news conference that "everyone has to do their bit" to fight climate change.

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Varieties

'Social Studies' TV Series Takes Intimate Dive into Teens' Smartphone Life

This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File
This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File
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'Social Studies' TV Series Takes Intimate Dive into Teens' Smartphone Life

This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File
This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File

Sifting through the smartphones of dozens of US teens who agreed to share their social media content over the course of a year, filmmaker Lauren Greenfield came to a somber observation.
The kids are "very, very conscious of the mostly negative effects" these platforms are having on them -- and yet they just can't quit.
Greenfield's documentary series "Social Studies," premiering on Disney's FX and Hulu on Friday, arrives at a time of proliferating warnings about the dangers of social networks, particularly on young minds.
The show offers a frightening but moving immersion into the online lives of Gen Z youths, AFP said.
Across five roughly hour-long episodes, viewers get a crash course in just how much more difficult those thorny adolescent years have become in a world governed by algorithms.
In particular, the challenges faced by young people between ages 16 and 20 center on the permanent social pressure induced by platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
For example, we meet Sydney, who earns social media "likes" through increasingly revealing outfits; Jonathan, a diligent student who misses out on his top university picks and is immediately confronted with triumphant "stories" of those who were admitted; and Cooper, disturbed by accounts that glorify anorexia.
"I think social media makes a lot of teens feel like shit, but they don't know how to get off it," says Cooper, in the series.
'Like me more'
This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media.
Via its subjects' personal smartphone accounts, the show offers a rare glimpse into the ways in which that hyper-connected reality has distorted the process of growing up.
We see how young people modify their body shapes with the swipe of a finger before posting photos, the panic that grips a high school due to fake rumors of a shooting.
"It's hard to tell what's been put into your mind, and what you actually like," says one anonymous girl, in a group discussion filmed for the docuseries.
These discussion circles between adolescents punctuate "Social Studies," and reveal the contradictions between the many young people's online personas, and their underlying anxieties.
Speaking candidly in a group, they complain about harassment, the lack of regulation on social media platforms, and the impossible beauty standards hammered home by their smartphones.
"If I see people with a six pack, I'm like: 'I want that.' Because maybe people would like me more," admits an anonymous Latino boy.
'Lost your social life'
The series is not entirely downbeat.
But the overall sense is a generation disoriented by the great digital whirlwind.
There are no psychologists or computer scientists in the series.
"The experts are the kids," Greenfield told a press conference this summer. "It was actually an opportunity to not go in with any preconceptions."
While "Social Studies" does not offer any judgment, its evidence would appear to support many of the recent health warnings surrounding hyper-online young people.
The US surgeon general, the country's top doctor, recently called for warning labels on social media platforms, which he said were incubating a mental health crisis.
And banning smartphones in schools appears to be a rare area of bipartisan consensus in a politically polarized nation.
Republican-led Florida has implemented a ban, and the Democratic governor of California signed a new law curbing phone use in schools on Monday.
"Collective action is the only way," said Greenfield.
Teenagers "all say 'if you're the only one that goes off (social media), you lost your social life.'"