• by Danielle Oster , April 4, 2025

Distracted driving is a growing problem -- and these days, social media may be the biggest source of distraction for younger drivers.

Eighty-six percent of drivers 16-24 admitted to using social media behind the wheel, according to a new study conducted by Suzy Market Research and commissioned by Project Yellow Light, a nonprofit focused on curbing distracted driving.

Project Yellow Light teamed up with The Martin Agency and director Quentin Deronzier of production company Le Pac, on a PSA campaign timed to Distracted Driving Awareness Month. The Martin Agency has ties to Project Yellow Light, whose founder, Julie Garner, is an agency veteran of some three decades whose 16-year-old son, Hunter, was killed in a car crash.

The campaign centers around a PSA with a rough runtime of three minutes. Entitled “Love Story,” the video takes a conversational, slice-of-life tone, following a pair of friends as they discuss a crush liking one of their posts on social media. While on the road, the pair record a video to post to their channels. The driver says, “Let me see it again,” as the screen fades to black, accompanied by the sound of an oncoming car – and then sirens.

The spot concludes with an onscreen message informing viewers of the statistic about young drivers’ social media use, and the lines “Social media while driving steals more than your time,” and “Don’t let this be the end of your story” (with the final word serving as both a message about the dangers of distracted driving and an allusion to social media use).

On a campaign landing page, Project Yellow Light shares further data from the recent distracted driving study – which found that 87% of young drivers have seen social media videos recorded in a car (like the one in “Love Story”).  The study also found that 12% reported having been in an accident, and 15% in a near accident, because of their phone use – 4.5 times the rate of accidents and nine times the rate of near accidents compared to 25-45-year--old drivers, according to Project Yellow Light.

The inspiration for the PSA came from reading a 2024 USA Today article about a fatal accident involving a truck driver who was using TikTok,  The Martin Agency associate creative directors Julian Cohen and Rushil Nadkarni told the publication LBB.  “We really believe in the power of proactive work and how we can use that thinking to change the world,” Cohen added. “Even though texting and driving has been something we’ve been talking about for the last 15-20 years, we realized that there hasn’t been much work around the dangers of not only consuming content while driving, but also creating content while driving.”