Jeremy Allen White finds the power of social media frightening — an anxiety he confronts in his latest film, “The Social Reckoning.”
The actor stars alongside Oscar winner Mikey Madison in Aaron Sorkin’s drama about the investigation behind “The Facebook Files,” a trove of internal statements and data leaked in 2021.
White plays then-Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, whose investigation into Facebook’s practices was aided by whistleblower Frances Haugen, portrayed by Madison.
“I’ve got a lot of fears about, like, what these companies want ultimately,” White told AFP.
“They want all of our time. They want all our attention. They want all of our engagement. They want the way we communicate to be with their tools.”
The actor described it as “a frightening concept that we don’t know where the ceiling is here. You know, they have billions and trillions of dollars. What else?”
“The Social Reckoning” serves as a sequel of sorts to 2010’s “The Social Network,” which chronicled Facebook’s origins. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, that film followed Mark Zuckerberg from a socially struggling student to the creator of an online ecosystem for making friends.
White, 35, opened a Facebook account during high school, when “it seemed innocent enough, I guess, at the time.”
But he remembers friends experiencing stress and insecurity over follower counts and who followed whom.
“Now it’s kind of like how we value everything in this world,” he said.
Madison, 27, who won an Academy Award for “Anora,” has stayed off social media. She said she shares “a lot of the same sensibilities” and concerns expressed by White.
In the new film, Jeremy Strong portrays Zuckerberg as an adult: still socially awkward, but now a globally powerful figure whose platform generates billions of dollars.
The drama depicts how company practices contributed to the radicalization of some users, according to the investigations.
Following the public revelations, Facebook’s parent company rebranded as Meta. The findings also sparked lawsuits, some seeking compensation running into millions of dollars.
For companies handling billions in revenue, however, White said “the sums are kind of irrelevant.”
He hopes the film will “get people to speak about the damages that can be caused by companies like Facebook.”
“I hope people ask their friends, their family members, ask themselves about their own relationship to social media platforms,” he said, including their information sources and mental health implications.
Wunmi Mosaku, who plays a fictionalized Zuckerberg adviser, shares those hopes for the film, which opens Friday.
“Social media is very much responsible for the climate that we’re in and the environment that we’re raising our children in,” she told AFP.
The actress, 40, said the film raises questions demanding answers.
“What are the governments going to do? Who are we beholden to? Are we just going to keep going on this journey that the billionaires are pulling us along, or are we going to put regulation in place?”
“Who are we allowing to feed into us and manipulate what media we consume, which bubbles we’re in?”
“It’s very upsetting.” — AFP
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