The Dilemma with The Social Dilemma
By: Taylor Barkley, Program Officer for Tech and Innovation at Stand Together
Social media being the primary driver of societal ruin is not a new idea. Books with titles like Weapons of Math Destruction, 10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism abound. A search of “social media” on YouTube brings up numerous videos that talk about social media’s harms. Podcast episodes and shows, conference topics and speakers, and news media coverage often paint a sour picture of social media. As of September 9, on Netflix, there is another addition to this lexicon: The Social Dilemma. During the week of its release it was the 4th-most-watched offering on Netflix, according to the service’s ranking system.
The Social Dilemma is an hour and a half feature documentary about the negative effects of social media on individuals, countries, and the world. Uniquely and persuasively, its subjects are mostly former employees of major social media companies with a few outside experts who weigh in on matters of medical or psychological issues such as addiction or depression. As far as introductions go to that field of expertise, this film excels.
In between interviews, the film features interludes of a fictional family as they act out various thoughts and actions related to social media pitfalls. One of the characters is depicted to be under the control of three personified algorithms that tailor his content, nudge him to look at his smartphone, and generally “drive engagement,” which in this case means getting him out of interpersonal community and into trouble.
The film is not balanced. You get what is advertised. As Tristan Harris, the primary interviewee and co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology, acknowledges toward the end of the film, their treatment of technology sounds one-sided. Mr. Harris acknowledges that we are living in a technologically induced “utopia and dystopia” at the same time. But the film focuses nearly entirely on the dystopia.
Nuance and context are not the film’s strengths. During the start of one segment, Mr. Harris looks at the camera and asserts that “no one got upset when bicycles showed up.” That is not the case at all. Many people, for years, were upset about the bicycle’s introduction, saying that it lowered church attendance, caused insanity, increased selfishness, and more. Like the bicycle, new technologies usually inspire a fearful response. Yet the worst-case scenarios often do not come to be. In the future we will very likely look back at social media technology as quaint compared to whatever that new media technology is. This time probably won’t be different.
Fundamentally, the harm of The Social Dilemma lies in the heightened sense of fear it inspires. Phrases such as “existential threat,” “checkmate humanity,” “false information makes more money,” and “It’s plain as day that these services are killing people,” dial up the doom to maximum volume. As Jason Feifer, the host of the Pessimists Archive podcast, and others have pointed out, the film uses attention garnering techniques to critique social media platforms for using attention garnering techniques. For an issue that is actually much more nuanced and replete with stories of good news, the film ignores those aspects.
Contrary to the film’s narrative, social media offers a number of benefits: support groups abound; marketplaces allow small businesses to cheaply advertise to the customers they’re trying to serve; it is a way to maintain “loose ties” in our social networks; it is a way to consume local to international news; it has been a tool to overthrow dictators and called attention to injustices.
Despite the harms claimed in The Social Dilemma, consumers place a high value on social media services. One study in 2018 found that Facebook users would have to be paid over $1,000 to give it up for a year. Some estimated values place social media services at over $10,000 a year per consumer. Another study estimated that “If the value to consumers of Facebook use was included in gross domestic product, the study concludes that annual real GDP growth would have been about 0.1 percentage point greater each year from 2003–17.”
However, given the seriousness of this film and the overall attention social media fears receive, surely there must be something to the film’s claims? Personal feelings of malaise, anger, depression, and other negative feelings have been felt by many people in close contact with social media. But these feelings are of varying degrees, intensity, unique circumstance, and most importantly should entail different responses for different needs.
Indeed, the research is still coming in on how social media use affects psychological health, but the trend shows that the effects are minor if any causation is found. A literature review of 16 such studies reported findings related to anxiety or depression were inconclusive and that more research should be done. Furthermore, many studies found positive mental health benefits from social media use like finding support and learning about mental health. But those findings were missing from The Social Dilemma.
The Social Dilemma also falls into the trap of treating the internet as the scapegoat for all human ills. At the start and in the last portion of the film there is a parade of horrible video clips. Footage of riots, violence, wars, terrorists gloating, streamed attacks and shootings, all seemingly to be blamed on social media. Yet the film again does not provide any historical context to back up the suggested takeaway that violence and wars are up compared to a time before social media. Also, as Adi Robertson pointed out on The Verge, many of the worst instances The Social Dilemma chalks up to social media were not perpetrated on social media at all but rather internet forums such as 8chan that operate very differently from major social media platforms.
Another of the explanations for what must be going on is the human tendency to overvalue or focus on the negative, what’s called the “negativity bias.” Thanks to smartphones, broadband, and social media, we can be made aware of nearly all the injustices happening at once. During the COVID-19 pandemic the new term “doomscrolling” has cropped up. Couple this tendency with the motivation in media — if it bleeds, it leads — you have a recipe for a sense, as Mr. Harris says in the film about the state of the world, “Is this normal? Or have we all fallen under some kind of spell?”
The film concludes by focusing on solutions. Although there are numerous suggestions, there weren’t specific details on how to implement them. Solutions included ideas such as a supposed need for more “regulation,” a need to “realign the financial incentives,” using phone company regulations as a model for internet and social media companies, taxing “companies on the data assets they have,” and outlawing “human futures markets.” There was the overwhelming sense that making money meant something was being destroyed, a zero-sum fallacy.
Rather than relying on politicians or even the companies to make changes, people should feel empowered to equip themselves to mitigate the harms they might encounter. Indistractable by Nir Eyal is a great resource on personalizing your response to social media and other distractions when there’s a sense that they’re getting the best of you. Mr. Eyal writes that the first step is to spend time examining your “triggers,” or why it is you might reach for social media. Then, ask yourself questions about what it is you would rather be doing. Take steps to modify your smartphone apps and notifications or build habits around computer use. There is a wealth of resources from the social media companies themselves and other organizations like the Family Online Safety Institute that offer up helpful suggestions for how maintain good digital hygiene. Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that technologies change and the dominant platform of today are not necessarily the dominant platforms of tomorrow.
Technology and innovation have been a force for good throughout human history but are not guaranteed. That is why we need a cultural and policy framework friendly to innovation to maintain the gains innovation has brought about. Nearly every technology we take for granted today was as at some point new, the way social media is to us now. We learn and adapt to change. Instead of fostering this openness and confidence, films like The Social Dilemma do the opposite. Emerging technology should be considered wisely, but that means keeping context in mind while knowing the beneficial, transformational track record innovation holds for humanity.
