'A Social Life' Short Film - analysing the message
'A Social Life' is a short film directed by Kerith Lemon, examining the publics obsession and preoccupation with Social Media - and the addiction this creates. Throughout the film, the protagonist - Meredith - can be seen positioning objects so they look photogenic and taking photographs of her activities that portray her in a very positive and healthy life.
In the film, Lemon clearly analysises the way in which we use socail media and the way our posts can be taken out of context or misinterpretated, leading some to believe that we are lying to our followers in an attempt to get more recognition or to create an unrealistic illusion of ourselves. Throughout, the film touches on the proposition of social media envy and depression, in which some people rely on certain interactions with their post to validate their self-worth and others opinions on them. Additionally, the film presents the view that we spend too much of our time on social media, with our days becoming preoccupied with browsing and posting photos or comments on these sites - making our personal and face-to-face social life almost non-existant.
David Guantlett Identity Theory
The film reflects Gauntlett's - a British sociologist - identity theory that through the use of the media, we are the audience and the producer, and therefore we can create our own identity and influence others. Hence, he describes the media as a 'tool box' where some good utensiles may be found and some useless ones. Gauntlett also suggests that 'in thinking about their own identity...in relation to those of media figures', a person will make assumptions and judgements on the way that their live their own life, despite potentially seeing a very small fraction of this figures life. Consequently, those figures that are deemed to be 'role models' influence the lives of their followers by acting as a 'navigation post' in regards to their lifestyle.
This can have severe consequences on one's mental health as portrayed in Lemons film, where she attempts to enlighten us with the damage that social media can play in creating unreasonable envy and depression upon seeing someone with a 'better' life than you through their social media posts. However, the truth is that the person has potentially posed a photo or picked a certain 'good' part of their life to post, meaning that we as an audience do not see the negative of their lives. This, therefore, gives the audience a very strong message on the negative impact that social media addiction can have in modern society, but damaging our mental health and our personal social life, by making us so preoccupied with another's life that we forget about our own.
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