Parents' Guide to LifeHACK

Screenlife's fast-moving cyberheist thriller plays like a Gen Z Ocean's Eleven. LifeHACK is surprisingly empowering for teens while simultaneously so shockingly educational about digital vulnerability that you'll likely start changing your passwords as the credits roll. Writer-director Ronan Corrigan, who's in his 20s, cracks open the laptop to peek into young folks' operating system, offering insights into how they interact, think, and use devices. All four friends are dealing with some kind of parental neglect (addiction, alcoholism, and modern-day abandonment) that has left them clothed and fed but also ignored and left to spend endless hours online. Still-developing frontal lobes and a lack of supervision leads to them daring to see whether they can get away something—it's a test of their abilities, an adrenaline rush they can't step away from, even though they know better.

The real lesson to lift from the film, though, is how accessible most people's data and personal information are—and why that matters. It's jaw-dropping to see how the four teens trick and defraud others with ease. Many viewers may become uncomfortably aware that they could be easy targets. And the lessons we've (hopefully) been teaching our kids about not putting their full name, address, or location out on social media go even deeper here, showing how, even when we tiptoe with our digital footprint, we still leave tracks that lead to us.