Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
MPAA Rating: PG Length: 82 minutes
Age Appropriate for: 10+. The rating is driven by archival footage of various 20th century events that include things like drug use and nudity, but it’s in a documentary setting, so it’s not exploitative in any way. Overall, younger kids may not grasp all the connections the filmmaker is trying to make about our interconnectedness and reliance on technology, but older children and teens should.
‘Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, and Technology’ very much wants to be a kind of high-tech memoir, an exploration of director Tiffany Shlain’s life, family, and place in the virtual world. But the film suffers from its surface-level depth, becoming something more superficially educational than deeply profound.
By Roxana Hadadi
Any person who has ever been on the Internet can tell you how interconnected we all are because of modern technology, how much the online world has changed how we read, write, and communicate; how we interpret and perceive others; and how we understand ourselves. It’s not a stretch, I think, to say that much about the Internet is obvious—which is why writer-director Tiffany Shlain’s documentary “Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, and Technology” feels so very familiar. In assessing how we’re all linked because of the world wide Web, Shlain isn’t doing anything revolutionary—and for tech-savvy viewers, that makes her work a pretty big duh.
