There are many moments in Devil’s playground that gives the audience easy visual evidence to follow, such as the scenes where Faron is spiraling down in life by taking drugs, and looking out the window thinking somebody is going to hurt him because he snitched on the drug dealer.
Another one would be the scene where Velda reads her college acceptance letter, we see her reaction and it’s obvious that she is happy that she made it. Whether these are staged or not, it still gets the point across that 1. Faron was depicted to be struggling with addiction at the time, and 2. Velda was happy to enter a new chapter in her life.
These examples are good visual evidence for giving us context and ideas about what their lives were like.