Boyhood: A Review

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Rating: 4.5/5

This film has been on my watchlist for a while, being on many critics' ‘top films of the 2010s’ lists, and I finally watched it the other night.

The film is fascinating. I always thought the idea of filming every year for twelve years was crazy but really cool, and its cobbled-together nature is really part of its beauty.

The film really speaks to life in all its facets; it shows the highs, the lows, the averages. We see good family life, rubbish family life, great fathers, abusive fathers — everyone trying to grapple with life.

The relationship between Mason Sr. and Mason Jr. stands out as particularly beautiful, and in contrast to Mason Jr.’s abusive stepfathers. Mason Sr. really wants to know his kids, and doesn’t shy away from asking those difficult questions. As a result, he develops such a beautiful relationship with his children, especially his son. This is really prevalent in the camping trip scene, one of my favourite from the film.

The film also, though, shows the heartbreak of losing your siblings, and your “normal” family life, as they move away from abusive stepfathers. The film simultaneously portrays the uniqueness of the characters' lives, yet also the commonality and averageness of their lives — as humans, we all crave the same thing, and we all experience many of the same things growing up. And the milestones, they fly so fast, and we sense the shortness of life — especially seen when Patricia Arquette’s character, the mother of Mason Jr., breaks down when he goes to college.

The soundtrack of the film is also part of its beauty; the songs are so delicately intertwined into the story, a mix of styles and ages, following the characters' through their lives. I particularly loved Hawke’s character, Mason Sr., gifting his son “the Black Album” of the Beatles — the love of music truly a thread across the years.

The awe of creation is really seen too; in the road trips, the hikes, but also in these relationships. However, the depths of sin are also seen in the drink-filled husbands, and the hurt in the broken relationships. The messiness of life is portrayed so simply, and yet the beauty in the mess is seen too. The characters are all trying to make sense of life, and chasing fulfilment in many places.

I’m not an expert on film, but it was so well done you got lost in the story. A janky, seemingly real story. These people, felt like people. You can see yourself in them; they seem so real and relatable. The actors truly give a performance of a lifetime; the film was shot over so much of their lives. Hawke, Arquette, Coltrane, Linklater, and a host of great supporting actors make this film even better.

Linklater crafts an incredible story, but one that is, in truth, the story of one ordinary family, one ordinary boy, growing up. There are many other things you can say — the sadness of divorce and a broken home; the abusive stepfathers — but it is like Linklater just pointed his camera, truly, for 12 years at a real family, and that, I think, is why Boyhood is such a great film.

Reflections on Modern Technology

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The majority of the books mentioned here are included in my What's Tech For? reading list, which can be found here.

One of the great bonuses of being a student is the long summers. This year, my summer has been not-so-much “busy” as being a patchwork of various, shorter commitments. This has left me, however, with lots of time to read.

One of the topics that has been of great interest to me since the pandemic has been modern technology; more specifically, the whole of the internet, digital life, and the increasing concerns around its rapid rise to complete ubiquity in modern life. The pandemic is often considered a “wake-up call” to where the digital trajectory could take us — video calls, virtual games, etc.

As a great lover of books, I had noticed that since I got a smartphone aged around 15, I had read less of them. In a slightly ironic twist, I turned back to books to try to understand why spending so much time on my smartphone and laptop was changing my habits, as well as my emotions. Two books I read were Digital Minimalism (2019), by Cal Newport, and How to Break Up with Your Phone (2018), by Catherine Price. (Later, I read 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You (2017), by Tony Reinke, which provided a helpful Christian perspective to this). These both provided an overview of how smartphones are engineered to hijack our attention, and be highly addictive to ensure that tech companies (especially social media companies) can a) gather lots of data on you to sell and b) send lots of ads your way. Both books also provided methods to help regulate your smartphone/digital tech usage, and this reason was why I picked them up as “self-help” books.

Over the following years, I went back-and-forth between fighting my digital addiction and embracing living digitally. On entering university, I felt I had found a somewhat equilibrium of analogue and digital (but it was definitely more pro-digital). However, again, at university I became more aware of the extremes of my digital use[^1]. This led me to read some more around the subject. Now, at this time, Jonathan Haidt had recently published The Anxious Generation (2024), which has galvanised a tech-critical movement across the globe. I read this ahead of writing one of my university assignments, and after all my assignments were submitted, it was a springboard for further delving into the topic.

Journal articles I had read around this topic (the essay was specifically on smartphones in schools from a theoretical geographic perspective) were all very heavy on the benefits of smartphones as mobile, locative devices, and there was little on the drawbacks they brought to the understanding of places and spaces. This led me to explore further literature. I started with several Christian books on the subject, both The Wisdom Pyramid (2021) by Brett McCracken, and the very recent Scrolling Ourselves to Death (2025) from a group of Christian authors. It was through this book that I began to read some of Neil Postman’s works, principally Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), and Technopoly (1992).

However, one of the best books I have read on the subject (so far!) I read more recently — Stolen Focus (2022) by Johann Hari. Hari’s compelling writing about his own experiences, as well as insights from many experts he interviewed across the world, provides a concise narrative of the whole issue — one he portrays as systemic, but not without hope for change. Indeed, Haidt also is hopeful that the tide is now turning as many realise the damage smartphones and social media have done not just to children — especially those who grew up in the early 21st century (like myself) — but also older adults as well. The question now is — will anything change?

Helpful in considering this question and reflecting on how we got here is Shoshana Zuboff’s mammoth The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019), which considers the growth of big tech companies, especially Google, and how their model of growth (with users' data feeding their profit machines) has become the new norm in the present age. I did find the book quite dense, but it is worth a read if you’re interested in some of the history and economic theory behind the recent success of big tech since the advent of the internet.

There are also other books worth reading in this area (I’ve really not read many at all!), depending on how deep you want to dive. The Shallows (2010) by Nicholas Carr is an excellent earlier look at how the internet has affected us, written before smartphones really (really) took off. The writers of Scrolling Ourselves to Death (2025) also have a list of good books on the subject, published on The Gospel Coalition website here.

To close, then, some key themes to draw out.

Firstly, the theme of attention, or rather, the loss of it. Many of the authors mention how our society has lost its ability to focus. Postman brings it out even when discussing the impacts of television a generation ago, and since then, it’s only got worse. The Shallows and Stolen Focus especially focus on this issue.

Secondly, the theme of the “non-neutrality” of technology. We often make the naive assumption that a technology does not change how we do things. E.g., someone might say, “reading the Bible on my phone does not change how I engage with it”. This is not true; as Marshall McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message”. The smartphone assumes things that change the way we interact with material. Reading a physical Bible is not the same as reading a digital Bible. This doesn’t mean we should be anti-technology, but it does mean we should be aware of the ways a medium shapes cultural conversations before we make it part of broader societal norms. This is a point we all need to be more aware of.

Lastly, the theme of change — both personal and systemic. All of this literature is written from a position of knowing something around our current technology usage is wrong, is unhealthy. There is a key application — of change. Some books emphasise a change to personal behaviours, for example, Digitial Minimalism. Others talk more about systemic change — a need to legislate, change societal norms, regulate tech companies. However, the best outcome is probably a mixture — we need to recognise how to change, but societal change is also needed. This is seen especially in Jonathan Haidt’s advocacy, especially since the release of The Anxious Generation.

These books have been very useful in deepening my understanding of technology, and there are many more out there. It is a nuanced topic worth thinking through and wrestling with, and I would recommend these books as a starting point!

[^1]: To clarify, I was probably still in the lower tail end of daily usage, but just someone more sensitive to my usage - still probably nearing 10 hours per day across all my devices.

Edward Mason's Thoughts

Boyhood: A Review

Reflections on Modern Technology