Social Media Use and Loneliness

My chosen media is Christopher Nolan’s thriller film Following, directed in 1998. In the movie, the main protagonist is unemployed writer Bill, who starts to follow [AM2] random strangers on the streets of London. He uses this practice as a form of entertainment as well as an inspiration for his writings. During these activities, he follows a man called Cobb. Cobb invites the main hero to accompany him in burglaries. Through the movie, Bill meets a few other criminals and participates in a variety of violent, illegal, and even mystical activities. Criminals frame him and used him as an instrument in achieving their goals.

The mobile communication technologies that I have chosen to focus on in this paper are mobile social media and dating apps. The problem of young and naïve Bill was his loneliness and inability to socialize effectively, to create a company and fruitful leisure, so he decides to follow other people. However, if Bill lived in our time, he could easily follow interesting peoples’ lives on Instagram or Facebook, could make new acquaintances through Tinder or Bumble, and he would be able to communicate with others on imageboards or Reddit. Mobile internet technologies would give him safe ways of communicating, keep him away from the criminal world, and, probably, would let him establish a connection with people like him in term of lifestyle, behavior, and psychology.

The research on academic sources would be focused on topics of the interconnection of loneliness and social media. Such journals as The Social Science Journal, Computers in Human Behaviour, Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking will be useful. 

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 [AM1]The film seems to be about more than this though? And the paper should center mobile communication more so than social media.

 [AM2]This suggests focusing on locative media (e.g., tagging locations on Instagram and cyber stalking)