A closer look
Sales of Caller ID devices tripled in the United States immediately following the release of the horror movie Scream in 1996, as teenagers suddenly grew terrified of answering their own home phones due to the terrifying premise of a masked killer taunting his victims over the telephone, which tapped into a very specific era of technological anxiety before everyone walked around with smartphones permanently glued to their hands, perfectly illustrating how Hollywood can accidentally manipulate the consumer electronics market just by making the completely mundane act of picking up a landline seem like a direct invitation to get brutally murdered by your emotionally unstable high school boyfriend
