By Sarah Darer Littman and Cindy L Otis prose novel
What happens when the person who feels like your closest friend is actually just a character on a screen?
In Influenced, a collaboration between Sydney Taylor Honor winner Sarah Darer Littman and former CIA officer Cindy L. Otis, readers are pulled into a timely story about the high stakes of social media. The novel centers on tenth-grader Lainey Johnston, who is grappling with intense anxiety and the loneliness of her twin brother moving across the country. She finds a lifeline in Bliss, a confident TikTok influencer living with cerebral palsy who has just achieved a major milestone as a wheelchair user in a school theater production. However, the book quickly exposes the cracks in Bliss’s polished online persona, highlighting the immense pressure of maintaining a brand that her parents rely on for financial stability. When the digital connection goes cold, Lainey travels to New York to find her friend, only to realize that the person she thought she knew was a carefully managed digital facade. Kirkus Reviews has rightfully praised this work as a gripping cautionary tale that dives deep into the psychology of our online interactions.
For educators looking to build a Changemaker collection, this book provides an excellent bridge to UN SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions by examining digital rights and the need for ethical frameworks in online spaces. Instead of just talking about “online safety” in the abstract, the narrative shows the real-world consequences of exploitation and the lack of protection for young, disabled creators. A teacher might use this story to spark a digital citizenship project where students design campaigns for healthy social media boundaries, directly connecting Bliss’s struggles to current research on influencer culture. The book also serves as a practical model for the IB Learner Profile trait of being caring, as Lainey moves from being a passive follower to a person who takes direct action to support a friend in crisis. It inspires student agency by demonstrating that being a digital citizen means more than just posting; it means developing the critical thinking skills to recognize injustice and the empathy to act when the screen goes dark.
