For the last several years, creative and technologically savvy defense counsel across the country have accessed Facebook and other social media sites in order to obtain the ever elusive “smoking gun” in a personal injury action. Whether a plaintiff in “constant pain” posts a photograph running in a marathon, or a “clinically depressed” claimant posts video links to her recent wedding celebration, defendants are using plaintiffs’ public and voluntary posts to shine a light on the inconsistencies between plaintiff’s public profile and plaintiff’s alleged injuries and limitations. Consequently, courts have been called on to recognize the relevancy of social media in the modern personal injury action. In a country in which 66 percent of online adults are connected to one or more social media platform,1 the court has finally accepted that social media records are subject to the same liberal rules of discovery as other forms of evidence.
Facebook and Beyond
The power and influence of Facebook and other social media outlets is undeniable. In fact, as of March 2012, Facebook has a staggering 901 million monthly active users and 526 million daily users. Recent studies have shown that on average, 398 million of those users were active on Facebook on at least six out of seven days.2 There have been more than 125 billion friend connections and more than 42 million pages with 10 or more “likes.”3 Additionally, more than 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook per day, and on average, during the first quarter of 2012, 3.2 billion “likes and comments” were generated by Facebook users daily.4
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