‘The Social Network’: All the movies that tackle the world of social media
The Social Network movie premiered in 2010 and helped set the tone for more social media themed movies to follow. After The Social Network hit movie theaters, the public had a lot of opinions about the dynamics of social media in general.
Questions started popping up about if social media was really helping people become more connected or if it was starting to create more of a distance. These movies shed a lot of light on society’s usage of social media today.
The Social Network
The Social Network movie focuses on the story of Mark Zuckerberg’s trail to success through the creation of Facebook. He became the world’s youngest billionaire after coming up with an idea that helped squash MySpace out completely. The movie goes over Zuckerberg’s lawsuits, real-life social dilemmas, and more. Jesse Eisenberg is the actor who took on the leading role as Zuckerberg.
Ingrid Goes West
Unlike The Social Network, Ingrid Goes West is a totally fictional movie and not based on a true story. It’s all about a woman named Ingrid who grows increasingly obsessed with an Instagram influencer she sees while scrolling through her feed one day.
Ingrid decides to uproot herself and move to an entirely new city to emulate the life of her beautiful Instagram idol. She also tries to become BFFs with the unsuspecting influencer wreaking havoc in the process.
Friend Request
Similar to The Social Network, Friend Request touches on the subject of adding & removing friends from online profiles. That is where the similarities drastically end though. Friend Request is a horror movie about a girl who kills herself after getting unfriended by the most popular girl on their college campus. She returns as a ghost, hunting down the popular girl’s closest friends.
The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma is a documentary about the negative impact constant social media usage can have on society. In this movie about social media IRL, several tech experts do their best to explain how your social network of choice targets the brain, messes with self-esteem, and worse. Some of the tech experts in the movie even suggest people delete their apps.
The Circle
Emma Watson plays the leading role in The Circle, a movie about a young woman who accepts a job offer at a powerful social media company. She begins to question how ethical her new boss and coworkers are after they reveal a new project they are working on. The experiment will take away individual privacy & freedom which isn’t something she feels comfortable with.
Seeing Emma Watson in a separate character persona, unrelated to her days in the Harry Potter franchise is really amazing also. She is a dynamic actress who is capable of taking on a diverse plethora of roles.
Disconnect
Disconnect tells multiple social media stories from different points of view. The 2012 film goes into detail about a student who is facing cyberbullies on a daily basis as well as a woman who is able to gain comfort from strangers using an online forum. It even includes a storyline about a young man who is making a living on a sexual webcam website.
Unfriended
Unfriended is another horror movie based on fictional social media events. It’s all about a group of teenagers who join an online group chat to gossip, laugh it up, and enjoy a night of conversation. Instead of having chill fun, a random user by the name of Billie227 joins leaving them all very confused. The teens decide to ignore the new addition to their chat to continue their conversation.
Things are running smoothly until they start receiving creepy messages that make them feel very nervous. They must delve into secrets of their pasts and reveal dark lies they’ve told in order to stay alive.
