Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

My hands delightfully slick with the buttery goodness of movie theater popcorn, I watched a woman triumphantly berate two Black police officers in the opening prologue of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning” (2026). The screen read in bold white letters: “White Girl Wasted.” 

“This is what happens when you’re white in America!” she screamed. The officers took a deep breath, visibly perturbed by her racist remarks but determined not to give her the reaction she wanted for her Facebook audience. Moments later, a horrified and mousy Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) watched the confrontation play out on that woman’s Facebook page. The post’s provocative caption? “Watch Me Own DEI Cops.”

Later, we learn that the woman — “White Girl Wasted” Kaylee (Portia Doubleday) — was once Haugen’s progressive friend, recently radicalized by Facebook’s algorithms who guided her to extremist alt-right hate groups. Haugen, a Facebook data scientist, attempts to point out the platform’s radicalization algorithm to her colleagues. 

Her warning falls on deaf ears.

Based on true events, this companion piece to Sorkin’s acclaimed Facebook drama “The Social Network” (2010) directed by Dave Fincher, follows the unlikely but resilient duo of Haugen, a consummate technophile, and Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), a technophobe investigative journalist.

When Haugen turns whistleblower, they attempt to expose Facebook’s frightening desire to turn human behavior into engagement and profit by publishing “The Facebook Files” in The Wall Street Journal. “The Social Reckoning” does a hauntingly good job of highlighting the dangers lurking behind our most beloved social media platforms as well as the corporate rhetoric and PR machines used to disguise what motives truly operate the system.

Madison gives a stellar performance as Haugen, a morally-conscious worker bee devoted to Facebook’s mission of bringing the world together — a philosophy it has strayed from in practice. She gives Haugen an untapped intensity that makes her difficult to look away from. Meek and awkward in most social situations, Haugen is nonetheless searingly passionate as the film unveils Facebook’s indifference to fact-checking, bullying and leniency towards hate groups. In a world where the loudest voice wins the room or algorithm, Madison’s soft-spokenness becomes a rebellion against the boisterous. 

White complements Madison’s performance with his obstinate portrayal of journalist Horwitz. His performance occupies familiar territory for the actor, recalling the stubborn smart-alecks of his previous roles as Carmen Berzatto in “The Bear” (2022), a tortured culinary genius, and Lip Gallagher in “Shameless” (2011), an unruly STEM prodigy. Here, however, that headstrong, wise-guy persona underscores the self-assuredness of Silicon Valley at large. 

Another performance worth noting is Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg. Strong and Sorkin build on Jesse Eisenberg’s automaton-like interpretation of Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” emphasizing the character’s almost alien estrangement from typical human interaction. The film even depicts his crisis-PR consultant Raya Akinola (Wunmi Mosaku) giving him detailed instructions on how to nod his head like a normal person.

Strong’s Zuckerberg has been hardened by VC wealth and the press into a cold CEO who seems unable to redirect his devotion from profit toward the betterment of society. Sorkin deftly exhibits the differences between Zuckerberg and his colleagues, using cold, ashen lighting to make the CEO appear strangely alien and distant from those around him. But Zuckerberg’s most alien quality is not his apparent inability to perform humanity. It is his ability to recognize human behavior as something worth being monetized, while remaining seemingly indifferent and holier-than-thou towards humans themselves.

In Sorkin’s screenplay, Facebook’s offices become less of the intended epicenter of human connection than a laboratory for the commodification of attention. The company’s great achievement is not connecting people — a mission Haugen returns to throughout the film, as if repetition alone would restore her faith in it — but learning which emotions will keep them connected and coming back for more. 

I was most struck by a montage towards the end of the film, where Sorkin depicts the Facebook offices during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Dozens of Facebook employees are cramped into a room filled with live videos of the riot on the news, and a clueless Zuckerberg stands in the middle. The audience is transported back-and-forth between the bloody riot — officers pelted with metal barriers and furious bodies, their blood soaking into the Capitol carpet and concrete — and the Facebook offices, scrambling as employees beg their leader to do something.

The contrast between the two scenes took my breath away and allowed the impact of digital voices online to be completely revealed in all of its bloody possibilities. For the first time in the film, danger was no longer simply talked about amongst the characters like a distant possibility, but shown in full, physical and brutal force. 

Leaving the theater, I found myself looking at my phone a little differently. I opened Meta’s Instagram — Facebook having been deleted long ago (sorry, not sorry) — and felt the platform’s incessant chatter of information blaring at me like an alarm: political advertisements for the upcoming midterm election; reels of “news” articles that, now that I look closer, are positively false; provocative and frankly annoying influencers yelling buzzwords that they know will generate views. 

I thought of Haugen’s concluding testimony before the U.S. Senate, where she begs America’s leaders to confront the growing dangers of social media. I thought of Sorkin’s montage of the Jan. 6 riots, triggered by the president’s online behavior. I thought of Zuckerberg’s cold silence before the news screen, unable to say, “Shut it down.” I thought of “White Girl Wasted” Kaylee and who she was before Facebook’s algorithms invited her to some of the most fierce right-wing hate groups on the platform. 

I looked back down at my phone, wondering what it wanted me to become.