Facebook on TV?

When you think of social media you probably think of being on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc but do you ever think of how it's used in TV shows? How the characters use it? How it affects characters relationships? How big a part of the story it is? These are things that I decided to investigate. I chose to watch one season of a show, the show I chose was the Flash. Obviously there are some shows that will have absolutely no social media because of when they are set however there are more and more TV shows coming out that are set in the present, future or close past. In all these shows you can you can see evidence of people using social media. 

Examples of this are: In Sherlock, John Watson writes a blog about the things that he and Sherlock investigate. In Supernatural Dean and Sam visit lots of different sites all the time to find information including sites where people talk to each other and share information. These are only a couple of examples however in majority of the TV shows that are set in modern times you can find some form of social media being recognized.  

In the Flash there is one particular form of social media that is used throughout the first season, this is a blog that is used by one of the main characters as a way to share information to other people who are interested in the same thing and so that they can receive information from other people. The character that uses it is one of the main female characters who is portrayed as a strong and confident young adult which can help some people in real life to see that anyone can blog and its not just for someone who might be shy or not confident that what they are writing isn't good enough. Throughout the season she is confronted by a lot of people that are close to her that are telling her to stop writing and she gets frustrated at all of them for not supporting her in something that she found she enjoyed. It helps people in the real world to not give up even when your friends and family are not believing that what you are doing is going well or that you are good enough to be doing it, whatever it is this doesn't just apply to blogging this can apply to starting a fan account on Instagram or starting a YouTube channel.  The character also uses it as a way to contact someone which turns out to be positive and negative because the other characters didn't want to have a close relationship with her because they thought it could get her hurt. For a while the character doesn't sign their name to the blog and as soon as they do they have someone coming after them, showing that social media can get you into trouble that you thought wouldn't happen from doing something so simple as signing your name onto a post. There was a positive side to it however, from writing the blog the character was able to receive information from  anonymous and non anonymous people about the thing that they were interested in, information that would have otherwise been very hard for one person to gather themselves.

  

Both pros and cons come from using social media which is evident in real life. The Flash has done well to make the consequences realistic which could help a lot of people to make some decisions on what they post onto social media. They can see what could happen if they give up some of their personal information although not as fictional or as extreme as some of the consequences in the Flash. However a lot of what happens in the Flash is just an exaggeration on what is completely possible.

Overall TV shows have included social media in their shows as a way to help show what can really happen to people in real life and the consequence you face when posting anything on the internet. Any sort of personal information you use or put onto social media can be used against you even when its something as small as your name can lead some people straight to you. The Flash also shows us that anyone can use social media even if they may feel like they are not good enough for people to read or watch or look at and that no matter how much people might judge you and shoot you down you should try it. Even if it doesn’t work out you can say you gave it a go. 

By Loren Emerson