How the internet is robbing us of innocence, by Emma
EMMA Watson has said using social media means young people are losing their innocence.
The 23-year-old, who stars in Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, said at the film’s Cannes launch that teens are ‘shortening’ their childhoods.
At the premiere Miss Watson appeared to sport a ‘helix piercing’ of three linked diamond cuffs on her left ear.
It was not clear if the jewels were a clip-on version. She wore a floorlength black and white gown with a sweetheart neckline.
She said: ‘I think it’s amazing how self-aware people are becoming as a result of constantly posting images on Facebook and Instagram.
‘They’re blissfully unaware their childhoods are being shortened. That period of time when you’re not selfconscious is sped up.’
Miss Watson, who shot to fame as Hermione in the Harry Potter movies, plays a pole-dancing socialite in the film, based on a real-life gang fixated by glamour who tracked stars such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan online and stole goods worth £2million.
Miss Watson revealed she watched ‘a lot of the Kardashians and Paris Hilton’ to prepare for the role. Speak- ing alongside co-stars Israel Broussard, Katie Chang, Taissa Farmiga and Claire Julien, she said: ‘I think technology is playing a really big part in a sense that everything has started moving so much quicker. We are becoming saturated with images. They can embody whatever they [fans] project onto that image.
‘It’s very different; it has very little to do with reality.’
Baz Bamigboye – Page 51