Back in 2011, when I first read the book Nerve by the local Pacific Northwest author Jeanne Ryan, I was instantly hooked. I loved reading about this dangerous and mysterious world taking place in the not so far off future of Seattle, Washington. Here was a main character who was my age, living in my part of the world, taking crazy and exciting risks during a fun night of dares. I loved it. I loved flipping to the next page to find out the rest of the story, and I loved envisioning myself as a part of that world.

Since Lionsgate optioned the rights to make Nerve into a movie several years ago, I have been anxiously awaiting its arrival to the big screen. When the movie was finally released this July, I decided to check it out.

For those of you who have absolutely no idea what Nerve is, it is about a high school student named Vee who on a whim decides to take part in an online game where Players are bribed with a cash prize to compete a series of dares throughout the night and live Watchers can pay money to watch the game and give feedback on the Players performances. The harder and more dangerous the dare, the more money is at stake.

While the movie itself was nothing spectacular, I was shocked with the underlying meaning that I continued to see within this movie that was structured as a cautionary tale. You see, Nerve highlights the dangers that are now present because of the social media age we are now living in. Here are these teenagers who think it would be a fun night to finish some dares and make some quick cash. However, soon they are pulled into a world where everyone can track their movements, their past gets used against them to hurt themselves and their friends, and their identities are ultimately stolen by the games creators.

Nerve shows its audience how easy it is to judge someone when we just see them through a screen. We as an audience never know the full story being told to us, so we do not know what we would do in the exact situation that some of these characters find themselves in. However, that did not stop several audience members from commenting about how the characters in the movie were not making good decisions. The audience became a part of the story in that moment.

Every situation that these characters got themselves into are ones that we are constantly told to avoid when using the internet. Do not talk to strangers, do not give out your personal information, do not tell anyone where you live. Yet these characters do it willingly for this new game, because they probably already do it every day online. Our society will tell people where we go to school, what restaurants we like, what concert we are going to. There are chat rooms to meet new people and we make internet friends because of them. Thanks to the GPS feature in most cell phones, there are even apps to tell you when your friends are nearby.

All of these personal facts are out there for someone to use, and Nerve hones in on that. It is made apparent that as we move farther into the digital age more and more of who we are will be accessible online and that can be dangerous. We put so much of ourselves out there in order to relate to our peers and we do not think twice about it. I know I have the same problem. My Facebook page contains my family members, my birthday, my school, what city I live in, what my favorite books are, etc. I am guilty of putting information out there just as much as the characters in this movie are.

I would be terrified to live in the world of Nerve, where someone can have easy access to my bank account and my social security number all because I played a game with the rest of my school. Maybe I already live in that reality and I am just unaware it. Maybe Nerve will become real within the next few years. If that happens, I have decided that I will neither be watching, nor playing.

If you have an extra few hours in a day, go see Nerve on the big screen and see what you think of this hauntingly realistic world this story creates.