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Social media is ubiquitous in the lives of teenagers, especially in the first world, so why have teen movies been so slow to reflect this? DAVID CREWE looks at some recent films that attempt to present realistic depictions of teens and technology - overtly or otherwise - and considers how they can prompt useful classroom discussion about representation and the role of social networks in our own lives.
Social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have become the dominant communication medium for Australian teenagers. A 2013 Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report found that 92 per cent of teens aged sixteen to seventeen had accessed social networking services in the past four weeks.1 Social media is everywhere, and it isn't disappearing any time soon; even as specific services go out of favour with teens (another ACMA report observed that 'the proportion of teenagers using Facebook decreased from 70 per cent in 2012 to 58 per cent in 2013'2), others invariably rise to take their place (for example, Instagram - used by 53 per cent of Australian young adults3 - continues to flourish).
Yet the pervasive ubiquity of social media is not reflected in modern movies. Cinematic depictions of contemporary life - particularly that of contemporary teenagers - rarely feature social media. When these social networking services do appear, they tend to be relegated to perfunctory 'cameos': a brief appearance of Facebook on a computer screen, a derisory mention of hashtags. As I will discuss later in this piece, films like Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze, 2014), Men, Women & Children (Jason Reitman, 2014) and The DUFF (Ari Sandel, 2015) are beginning to shift this trend, but they remain outliers.
This is not especially surprising. Movies are traditionally slow on the uptake when it comes to new technology, evidenced by a suite of thrillers from the 1990s on that relied on 'dead zones' to explain away mobile phones that otherwise would have solved narrative problems within seconds (among many other similar examples). But such problems should have long ago been resolved when it comes to social media, given that it's existed in one form or another since the early 2000s.4
There are challenges involved in incorporating social media into movies, granted. Getting permission...