[This section corresponds with slides 4-6 of presentation]
Within the film, social media has a huge impact on reputation. At the start, Laura is extremely popular, with many friends both online and in person. She posts frequently and spends a lot of time with friends, and is generally very happy with her life. This all changes when Marina takes over her account and she starts posting graphic videos. Laura’s online friends are horrified and disgusted by the content posted to her account. They respond by unfriending Laura and leaving hateful comments. Despite explaining the fact that she has no control over the account and is unable to delete it, her school ends up suspending her due to the content on her page. By the end of the film, Laura is left with zero friends, and she is now the “weird girl” at school all due to the complete destruction of her online reputation.
Though obviously lacking the supernatural influence of Friend Request, social media has consequences for your reputation in the real world too. This is often the case when seeking employment. According to the findings of a survey conducted by the Harris Poll of over 1000 hiring managers and human resource professionals, social media has an impact on the hiring decisions of many employers. 70% of those surveyed use social networking sites to research job candidates ahead of time[1]. Of them, 57% have not hired candidates based on what they found online[1]. Social media monitoring isn’t limited to job-seekers either. 34% of employers have reprimanded or fired employees based on content they found online[1]. Some of the biggest things employers look for include provocative or inappropriate images, videos or information, evidence of drinking or drug use, discriminatory comments about topics such as race, gender, and religion, evidence of criminal behavior, evidence of the candidate lying about their qualifications, and displays of poor communication skills[1].
Much like in the film, online reputation has consequences for education as well. It is possible for students to be expelled due to content posted on social media. For example, students accepted to Harvard found each other through the official Harvard Class of 2021 Facebook group and started a meme chat [2]. It eventually split off into a second darker R-rated meme chat where members were required to post provocative memes in the original chat in order to join the new one[2]. When Harvard’s admissions committee discovered this, at least 10 students had their admissions offers revoked due to the offensive messages and images they sent[2]. In another case, two highschool students from Georgia were expelled for a racist video they posted on TikTok[3]. Their video contained racial slurs and derogatory comments and the school responded quickly, saying that despite the fact that it was filmed outside of school hours, “it doesn’t alleviate the students’ responsibility to uphold a high standard of behavior”[3]. Those pursuing education are expected to remain respectful online, so unacceptable online behavior can result in real world educational consequences.
[1] Career Builder, More Than Half of Employers Have Found Content on Social Media That Caused Them NOT to Hire a Candidate, According to Recent CareerBuilder Survey (PR Newswire, 2018) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/more-than-half-of-employers-have-found-content-on-social-media-that-caused-them-not-to-hire-a-candidate-according-to-recent-careerbuilder-survey-300694437.html (Accessed 10/04/20)
[2] Hannah Natanson, Harvard Rescinds Acceptances for At Least Ten Students for Obscene Memes (The Harvard Crimson, 2017) (Accessed 10/04/20)
[3] WSAV Staff, Georgia high school seniors expelled after posting racist viral video to social media (Khon2, 2020) https://www.khon2.com/news/national/georgia-high-school-seniors-expelled-after-posting-racist-viral-video-to-social-media/ (Accessed 10/04/2020)
[This section corresponds with slides 7-9 of presentation]
“Social media addiction is considered as a kind of internet addiction. Individuals who spend too much time on social media have a desire to be notified of anything immediately, which can cause virtual tolerance, virtual communication and virtual problem. Behaviors that force the person into these actions can be explained as social media addiction” [9]. With technology advancing every day through cell phones and computer applications, people are getting addicted to this technology and the apps that come with it. A Reliability and Validity Study through a Social Media Addiction Scale-Student Form found that 72% of all college students have a social media account and 45% of students access social media once a day [9]. These numbers are not surprising in my opinion, I am part of the proportion of students who have social media and access it more than once a day even.
Another study showed that addictive social media use has been shown to be associated with depressive symptoms, loneliness, anxiety, negative moods, low self-esteem, and dissatisfaction with one’s appearance [10]. People spend their lives on social media when they are not happy with their own. This is a theme seen in the movie and in real life. The director of the movie stated that he thought social media and the internet makes us vulnerable. People share their whole lives with everyone else and compare each other. It can be detrimental to one’s health, therefore social media use is best when limited.
This graph is from a study that identified distinct patterns of social media use and to assess associations between those patterns and depression and anxiety symptoms. The groups that showed statistical significance in the study were “Wired” and “Connected” –these students who were thought to use social media frequently enough increased the odds of elevated depression and anxiety symptoms. “Three clusters—Unplugged, Concentrated Dabblers, and Diffuse Dabblers—were not associated with depression or anxiety. This finding supports the notion that moderate media consumption may not be associated with mental health risks for some individuals.“ [11]
“Adolescents seeking to undermine the social status of popular adolescents might resort to cyberbullying behaviors, which may ultimately more damaging for the reputation of the victims than face-to-face attacks, and can be pursued in anonymity by the perpetrators” [10]. This is exactly what happened in the movie, where Marina felt left out that she couldn’t be part of Laura’s “popular” friend group, so she started cyberbullying her (as a demon of course) but she was kind of anonymous in a sense. This is worse for the reputation of the victim, Laura. Laura got expelled, lost her close friends, and lost any other acquaintances after what Marina did to Laura online.
In conclusion, social media is best when limited, and when people can live their life happily without social media. Social media can be addicting to certain groups of people and is prevalent among younger students.
[This corresponds with slides 10-11]
In the film Marina is able to learn everything about Laura and her friends through their posts on facebook. Which was made easier because Laura and her friends posted everything about their lives and were constantly posting. Marina was obsessed with Laura and used social media to stalk her both virtually and in person. This all started when Laura accepted Marina's friend request and when Laura unfriended Marina, she killed herself and began tormenting Laura and her friends by possessing their technology. Marina "hacks" Laura and her friends' technology and is able to post on Laura's timeline and become virtual friends with all of them. In this movie hacking is done by the way of witchcraft, not in the generic way. Laura is distraught and wants to end all of this. She learns tha Marina used a fake name to enroll and uses Marinas facebook account to learn more about her and her horrific past.
Although alot of things in the movie can't directly translate to real life, it does highlight important concerns involving privacy and social media. Social media leaves your information vulnerable. An example is data mining, which is the collection and storage of your information and this can be done on all sorts of social media applications and websites. Many times they share your information with other companies often without the users consent. An example of this is the Cambridge Anayltica scandal which happened in 2018, where it was discovered the company cambridge analytica had bought information from facebook about its users, without the users knowledge and used the information the help Donal Trump's presidential campaign.[1] It started the conversation about how data can be misused. Also your friends on social media and other accounts you interact with can also leave your privacy vulnerable. A study done by the University of Adelaide in Australia and the University of Vermont in the United States showed exactly this. All they needed was tweets from 8-9 accounts, these accounts being friends of the test subject, and they could start to create some startlingly accurate profiles. For example, machine learning algorithms could start to predict factors such as “political affiliation” or “leisure interests'' simply by studying the tweets of someone’s friends.[2] Even if you delete your account, there's a virtual version of you that exists through your previous interactions. Hacking social media can be done the more traditional way, but there exists an easier way to hack social media accounts, being social engineering. Social engineering uses persuasive psychological techniques to exploit the weakest link in the information security system: people. The more personal and professional information you include on your public profile, the easier it is for a hacker to exploit that information to gain your trust.[3] The movie showed an example of cyberstalking and real stalking, which can be made easier through social media. A study of Facebook profiles from students at Carnegie Mellon University revealed that about 800 profiles included current address and at least two classes being studied, theoretically allowing viewers to know the precise location of individuals at specific times.[4] There also exists application specifically meant for stalking and social media itself offers the ability to tag the place a picture was taken. There needs to be more regulations. Privacy laws in the US are currently too weak to prevent abuses of social media data. There has been a greater push by the american people following the Cambridge analytica scandal and snowdon.
[1]Issie Lapowsky, How Cambridge Analytica Sparked The Great Privacy Awakening, (wire.com, March 17, 2019),
https://www.wired.com/story/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-awakening(October 8, 2020)
[2]Nicole Lindsey, New Research Study Shows that Social Media Privacy Might Not Be Possible, (cpomagazine.com, February 3, 2019), https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/new-research-study-shows-that-social-media-privacy-might-not-be-possible/ (October 8, 2020)
[3] Dave Ross, How Online Social Networks Work,(howstuffworks), How Online Social Networks Work(October 12, 2020)
[4] Gross, R. and Acquisti, A. 2005. Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networking Sites (The Facebook Case).[online]. p. 8. Available at: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/privacy-facebook-gross-acquisti.pdf [Accessed 12 October 2020].