MTV Film “(Dis)connected� Fights Digital Abuse [EXCLUSIVE]

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MTV’s new movie, (Dis)connected, tackles what it means to grow up in a digital world, and it provides lessons for teens on how to handle digital abuse. Today, Mashable is debuting a clip from the movie.

The film, premiering Oct. 10, is another in MTV’s long line of TV movies tackling tough subjects for its young demographic. (Dis)connected tells the story of four young people living in different cities who know each other only through a live streaming site. Even though the four never meet in person, the Internet allows them to have huge, and potentially negative, impact on one-another.

(Dis)connected is part of MTV’s “A Thin Line” campaign, a social good initiative to create tools and inform teens about staying safe on the web. Each of the four characters in the film deal with separate online dangers and scenarios such as offline isolation, meeting partners online, breakups that spread to online profiles and anonymously antagonizing other users.

MTV conducted a digital abuse survey in conjunction with the Associated Press and found that 76% of 14- to 24-year-olds surveyed said digital abuse was a serious problem; 56% said they experienced digital abuse. MTV and the AP conducted the same survey in 2009 and found that youths in 2011 were significantly more likely to intervene if they saw someone “being mean online.”

The network also held chat sessions with personalities such as sex and relationship advice columnist Dan Savage and the Jersey Shore‘s Vinny Guadagnino to talk to teens about digital abuse. “Everyone has a Facebook, everyone has a cellphone and everyone has a Twitter but people don’t really talk about the negative aspects of it,” says Guadagnino, who says he can relate to being digitally abused. “Every time I publish something, someone’s calling me a douchebag or an asshole so it depends how seriously I take those comments and how personal I feel towards the feedback I get. I’ve become pretty good at not taking it so seriously.” Guadagino got involved with (Dis)connected to help other young people handle their own abuse.

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For Savage, the film is also about teaching kids how to navigate the digital world: “You either develop BS-detectors through painful trial and error or you get your ass handed to you. … And you can get that through fiction as well, you can get that through narrative.”

The Internet is a tool that can be used for good or ill, though Savage has a pretty simple formula: “Don’t be a dumbf–k and don’t be a douchebag,” Savage says. “When it comes to things like this, you just want to move the needle in a positive direction. If you can send the edges off of some problem spots, then that will spread.”

(Dis)connected is inspired by Abraham Biggs, a 19-year-old who battled bipolar disorder and webcast his suicide after being harassed by digital abusers.

More About: cyberbullying, digital abuse, mtv, Social Good, Video