Review — The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma, on Netflix, is a clever but simplistic drama-documentary. An absolute eye opener with regards to our social media consumption, helping us learn more about the insidiousness that underlies social media; on how our brains are being manipulated and even rewired by algorithms that are designed to get our attention and make us buy things, including buying into distorted ideas about the world, ourselves, and each other.
This documentary gives us an enjoyably lucid explanation of how sites keep users scrolling and clicking, reiterating a familiar and simplistic assessment of how the internet has changed our lives. An indictment of the tech industry, the film succinctly lays out the damage being done by companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter through their social media platforms and search engines, the how and why of what they are doing and most vitally, what needs to be done to stop it.
Even if you have little interest in social media or rarely Google anything, this film is a worthwhile peek behind the curtain and helps explain so much of the craziness we see right now in the real world. It reveals much more than why you go from Googling the best sofa one minute to finding sofa ads on your Facebook stream the next. That so much online seems free is part of the trap: It is our private data that is being sold. Advertisers are the customers and we are the thing being sold.
The film nicely delves into how algorithms that seek to maximize advertising revenue tap into psychology to keep us addicted to our screens. Did a friend just tag me? I got an alert! Hey, Facebook just invited me to an event. Those are all “positive intermittent reinforcements” and they keep us checking our phone for more, like a gambler hoping for a windfall.
There have been other documentaries raising concerns about the impact of social media on our privacy and our morale and even our democracy. But this documentary has a significant advantage. While all of the films have impressive experts to explain how we got here and why here is not a place anyone should be, in this movie many of the experts are the same people who got us here i.e. top executives from Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and other sites that seduce us into spending time and sharing information so they can sell both. It is not paranoia. It is not disgruntled former employees with axes to grind. Many of those interviewed walked away very wealthy and continue in tech, bullish on its benefits, only with more altruistic ambitions.
As the film opens, we can see that the people who will be telling us their stories are uncomfortable and embarrassed. It turns out, they will be confessing and apologizing. For example, there is Justin Rosenstein, the inventor of Facebook’s most ubiquitous feature, the “like” button. He sheepishly says it was intended to “spread positivity.” What could be wrong with letting your friends and their friends “like” something you have posted? Well, it turns out people get their feelings hurt if they do not get likes. So, they amend their behaviour to attract more likes. Does that seem like a problem? Consider this: a large population of the people urgently trying to get “likes” are young teenagers. We all know the excruciating nightmare that teenage is, when all of a sudden you no longer take for granted what your parents tell you and decide that what you really need is to be considered cool or at least not a total loser by your friends at school. Now multiply that by the big, unregulated world of the internet. This is why there is a precipitous spike in anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide attempts by middle and high schoolers. The experts assure us their intentions were good, even the one whose job title at Facebook was head of “monetization.” Another one confesses that he worked on making his site irresistibly seductive at work all day and then found himself unable to resist the very algorithmic tricks he helped to create when he went home at night.
If you are ready to stick around after the film is over, you would get to hear lots of recommendations from former tech leaders who built the mess we are in: They turn off their notifications. They delete many apps. They urge regulation. They do not let their kids use social media. Think about that!
The Social Dilemma may be the most important documentary you see this year. So much so that after watching the film you will immediately want to toss your smartphone into the garbage can. And then toss the garbage can through the window of a Facebook executive.
