Jason Reitman's tale of technological malaise – Men, Women & Children – is a generations-spanning survey of how we interact, sext, and cheat in our relationships. We're celebrating his digital spectacle through in-depth interviews with cast members Ansel Elgort and Judy Greer; Bibio walks us through three melancholic melodies from the soundtrack, and we look at how cinema is slowly reverting to silence on screen.

The children of Men, Women & Children have just about as many reasons to ring up a therapist as their parents. Travis Tope's character is addicted to interactive porn and struggles to get it up in during his first time. Elena Kampouris' character trawls pro-ana websites for 'thinspiration', willing herself to avoid that blueberry muffin. Kaitlyn Dever's character has a secret cosplay Tumblr where she dons pink wigs and spills her true feelings. It's all underneath the surface – real life issues that bubble up in Jason Reitman's twisted take on teenage torment. The conversation took a turn for the frank in an interview with all of the young cast – here they talk about porn, online personas and the pressure to stay thin in the industry.

Are you kind of like surprised at how frank this film is about teen sexuality and their interactions with porn?  

Travis Tope: Yeah, I just wanted to talk to you about porn. Just kidding! Because my character deals a lot with porn. Well, to the point where… I’m probably going to have to use the word “masturbate” a lot to talk about my character.

The fact that your character Chris needs an almost fetishistic sexual enticement in order to connect on an actual physical level with another person...

Travis Tope: Well, that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? Clearly that is an issue with some people. Chris’s whole thing is that he’s never had a sexual interaction with a girl in real life. All of his sexual interactions have involved visual stimulation via the internet. When he actually goes to have a sexual interaction with a real girl, that’s not what turns him on. His sexual attraction is so disconnected from real sexual interaction.

Among the girls there’s this really casual conversation in the beginning where they’re talking about virginity and I was just a little bit shocked about how nonchalant the whole things was.

Katherine Hughes: One of my favorite scenes.

Kaitlyn Dever: That is such a good scene.

Katherine Hughes: Yeah, it's funny because it shows, especially in this movie, how as time’s gone on in this generation, the romance has really been taken out of sexual encounters. And I think that scene definitely sheds light on how progressive and fast it's become. It really sets the film up to really understand the texting situation in the film. Elena and I are the ones who send Jason all the emojis. We love emojis. So seeing so many emojis in that scene is so silly because it's just…

Elena Kampouris: But it's true, though, it's so true.

Katherine Hughes: Like sometimes when I’m texting someone I’ll just text emojis to say like how I feel. I won’t even write something, I’ll just be like: happy face, party face.

There is a scene where two people are talking about a really serious subject to each other, but it is not spoken, they’re walking by each other in the hallway and texting. Is this realistic to how people communicate these days?

Kaitlyn Dever: I think it's so relevant and I know that I have been guilty of texting something serious to someone that I probably should have said to their face. There’s a lot of stuff and you're like, “Oh, okay, yeah,” and it kind of slaps you in the face when you're watching it.

I felt guilty texting after the film, so I’m just wondering are you always connected to this phone of yours?  Or are you cool enough to put it down and connect with the real world?

Ansel Elgort: Using your phone is a good thing. However, people are really stupid with their phones, including myself. Every time I have any second where I’m not entertained or I’m stressed, I’m flipping through Instagram just over and over again and refreshing, trying to see if somebody posted a new picture, for no reason. I’m not getting anything out of that. I don’t care. And if I’m actually occupied with something I would never do that. It almost now is something that you fill space with and it's just a distraction.

Kaitlyn Dever: I really agree with what Ansel said because I feel like since we’re able to constantly have access to checking our notifications, our emails, our account updates and all that, it's turned our generation into an obsessive one. It's become habit to constantly refresh and check and it's really shifted the way that we live our lives and our lifestyle and everything.

Travis Tope: It doesn’t mean anything really, I don’t think, when someone likes your photo or something. It's meaningless. And yet people derive self-worth from that. That’s kind of scary, that people are putting value in these things that don’t matter at all.

Ansel Elgort: From personal life, that doesn’t mean anything. But then from like an actual business standpoint a “like” is worth a lot because it's advertisement. So what you can do with social media as an advertiser is insane because it's free, whereas if you were trying to get an outreach ad to let’s say in my case 3.5 million people, that costs a lot of money. So the studio is very happy that I have a lot of followers because that’s able to advertise this movie. I’m happy too because this is a small budget movie that wouldn’t be able to do a big ad campaign. Then you're able to advertise something and it's important to you.

“It doesn’t mean anything really, when someone likes your photo or something. It's meaningless. And yet people derive self-worth from that, people are putting value in these things that don’t matter at all” – Travis Tope

Kaitlyn, your character creates this online persona on Tumblr and opens herself up into this other person. What do you think it is about the internet that allows people to showcase, in their minds, their real version?

Kaitlyn Dever: Their real self? When it comes to the internet you can be anyone and it’ll look like anything. It’ll look real. So when Brandy’s posting, she’s just trying to be someone else because she’s trapped in her own world and she can’t figure out who she is as just being herself. That’s why she does this online. She becomes this different person and a lot of people will be able to relate to that because even I know people, when they post stuff it's totally not them. It's like totally the opposite of who they are as a real person. That’s what’s scary about the internet because you just don’t know who they actually are sometimes.

Travis Tope: I don’t think that’s scary.  

Ansel Elgort: Every young person wants to be someone else. Every young person wants to be able to escape and feel like they’re someone else and explore other parts of themselves.

Kaityln Dever: I think that’s what it is, too. Every young person, especially in this film, is trying to just figure out who they are.

Ansel Elgort: Yeah. Every young person in life has always wanted to figure out who they are and always wanted to rebel a little bit. That’s just young people. It's so interesting to see in this film for the first time how people do that now with the internet instead of dressing up and standing outside on the stoop looking cool, smoking cigarettes. (laughs) It's changed a little bit. People post pictures of themselves smoking cigarettes on Tumblr or something. This is I think the first movie to capture that, which is awesome.

On a larger scale, not just to the girls, but does everybody have pressure to kind of stay in a very specific physical shape in order to work in this industry?

Ansel Elgort: I think guys can get away with it more. It's pretty unfair, but guys don’t take as much shit for being out of shape or like being fat or being too skinny.

Katherine Hughes: Right. Girls get hit hard with that, though.

Will Peltz: And the idea today like Elena was saying, if you look at pictures you know 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you look at models in bikinis they’re much thicker. Their boobs are bigger, they have fuller bodies. Now it's like a whole different body.

Ansel Elgort: We’re going back there a little bit.

Will Peltz: You think so?

Ansel Elgort: I mean, yeah, there’s models that are in just the fancy fashion magazines who are so skinny and luckily we’re going back to Sports Illustrated, like Kate Upton on the cover.

“I think as a young actor it's okay with being a brand, like a product almost, which is frustrating. But you have to also be like ‘I'm an artist as well’” – Kaitlyn Dever

In your own words, if you have a friend that is curious about the film how would you describe it to them?  

Katherine Hughes: I always tell people it's going to slap you in the face. You know what I mean? Like you're going to watch it and kind of reevaluate how you're living your life.

Kaitlyn Dever: It’ll make people aware of how much is going on online and it's also to show that it's not really a bad thing or a good thing. It's just how the world is changing.

Elena Kampouris: It's really eye opening. It's going to make people really aware of a lot of issues that’s going on right now. To get their eyes open because there’s a lot of heavy issues covered in this movie and I think it's really significant.

Will Peltz: She said exactly what I was going to say. It's eerie to how well you know these characters or if you don’t know that person you know someone who’s just like it. It's like a lot is how the internet changes your sex, your sex life, being a kid or an adult.  

Ansel Elgort: If I was to hang out with some friends, I would try to like, you know (looks at Timothee), I’m not going to exactly tell you what this movie’s about. But it's some real shit. (laughs) Like this movie…

Timothée Chalamet: Should I go see it?

Ansel Elgort: Yeah, Timmy, you should see this movie, it's like some real shit.

Timothée Chalamet: Oh yeah? Why?

Ansel Elgort: It's just like… it's the first movie that really captures like what’s going on right now. You know what I mean? I don’t have to explain it to you right now.

Timothée Chalamet: I heard that The Fault In Our Stars kid is in it. (laughs) Is he good?

Ansel Elgort: He’s actually really good. (laughs) But yeah, no, you should just go see it. Just go.

Men, Women & Children is out in cinemas December 5