Bullying and Social Media: A Movie Review

is a movie that is inspired by actual events and stars Jodelle Ferland as the 16 years old Haley, a schoolgirl who strains to be accepted in the society. To achieve this, she begins to hang out with popular kids such as the likes of Alexa(Tess Atkins), Kristin(Keely Purvis) ), Becca (Caley Dim mock), and Lauren (Genevieve Buechner), by doing so, she thinks she would be able to climb the social ladder and become acceptable. Tragedy, however, follows her when she posts some comments about her new found friends online and the friend’s gang up to be her in retaliation. Harley and her parents are now faced with the situation of making sense to the world in regards to the norms and the socially accepted laws that bind the society as they are seeking justice for the sick Harley.

Parents and guardians watching the movie need to know that the movie is based on the widely publicized true story about a school girl. The movie contains several acts of violence and scenes where a young woman is bullied and attacked physically by her peer and friends. Throughout the movie, they are obscure scenes of teens kissing each other including those of the same gender kissing. In other parts, the movie shows a group of students groping together and drinking beer, hard liquor, and other mixed drinks. Bloody wounds are visible especially when Harley is attacked. The movie also has used words such as bitch an ass which is quite audible throughout the play. Despite this, the movie contains strong messages warning people of bullying and the fatal consequences of fatal online behavior.

The plot of the movie revolves around Haley whop while in high school finds it very hard to make friends. Despite the fact that she is intelligent, she does not have a friend except one whom they get bullied every time. By acts of sheer incidents, she, however, begins to talk to a very popular girl in the school named Alexa. Alexa on her part is the opposite of Harley, she has a group of friends unlike her who has only one friend. In a matter of time, Harley gets into the circle of friends and start to hang out together.

Harley changes soon after she gets her new friends and the concept of mob psychology enters into her mind. She gets rude even to her parents and starts to ignore her old friend. Her friendship, however, is the beginning of her downfall. In one particular incidence, she gets a call from Alexa when crying and in need of her company. Unable to resist her, she goes to spend a night with her despite the fact that she had been grounded. Alexa friends in the meantime are jealous of the new intimacy of her and Haley and soon find out a post that Haley had posted online talking ill of Alexa. They plan to take revenge on her and beat her severally on the house.

The movie has been scripted like most of the Lifetime movies, the use of drama and the continuous use of vicious attack to drive the message home is common in this genre of movies. Overall, the movie has made a huge success in sending the message home on the aspect of bullying. This has been done by identifying the real emotional and the legal consequences of one engaging in bullying and acting inappropriately in the social media.                                                                                            

                                             Work cited 

Heller, Melvin S., and Samuel Polsky. “Studies in Violence and Television.” (2016).