Author: Yang Gao

 
Four Stories About Social Media
-An Interactive Film About Social Media Addiction
Four Stories About Social Media is an interactive film that explores different types of social media addiction. The viewer can decide how they can proceed the story by clicking on an icon such as a phone and a smiling face that leads to different directions of the stories.
When social media becomes increasingly accessible and user friendly, it has the potential
to dictate people’s lives. One will notice that most people are on their phone when they wait in the line, take the subway, etc. Although, social media helps people to communicate, it has become a place where people are trapped into and constantly bombarded by new informations, while pretending that nothing else matters. As an online communication tool, social media can lead to anti-social (lack of communication in real life). For example,: people would rather to communicate online instead of talking face to face. To a more extreme circumstance,; they focus on their phone even with the one they love is sitting right next to them. If the primary goal of social media’s user experience design is to not ‘make the user think.’, therefore, social media has the characteristic to invite people to become addicted to it. Four Stories About Social Media makes people recognize their addiction to social media and to think about it differently.
Interactive film is a non-linear storytelling form. Unlike traditional film and plot-driven games, it provides users with an immersive and interactive story experience. In Four Stories About Social Media, the user experiences two different modes of interaction, a parallel mode and a choice mode. When using parallel mode, the user can flip between two versions of the same scenario to see how the protagonist behaves with or without their phone. The first story, I’m Starving, is about a girl who always takes photos of everything about herself and shares them on social media. People can switch back and forth to see how two parallel stories: one in which she cannot leave her phone and one in which she enjoys her life and food happily. The second story, Her Birthday, is about how social media addiction impacts our most intimate relationships. The couple in the second story face, touch and kiss each other when they do not have phone, however, when they start browsing on social media, they turn around and become indifferent and even communicate with each other online, even though they are only half a foot apart.
While parallel mode allows the viewer to compare two versions of the story automatically and simultaneously, choice mode offers the user a more complex plot and diverse experience. The third story, Go Back to the Phone, portrays a guy that is talkative online but is deeply socially anxious in reality. The viewer can choose how he reacts when his datemate asks his opinion and how he will behave when the situation becomes embarrassing and awkward, and therefore leads to different endings. The fourth story, Interview, takes place outside a job interview. The viewer can choose questions for the protagonist, a social media stalker, to ask: one will involve very professional questions that shows he did some research of the company; the other one will involve some awkward and inappropriate questions that come from his experience of stalking the interviewer’s social media account.
The form of interactive film allows the user to experience how life will look with or without social media, what social media addiction looks like, and how our lives are impacted by it. By clicking the icon to switch the stories or make the choice, you will be the protagonist and make life changing decision. decide how you will behave in the situation. By exaggerated acting and dialogue, the film conveys the concept in a comic and expressive way. Ultimately, it prompts the viewer to realize the side effects of social media and reflect how they can avoid social media addiction.