The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama film directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis. The documentary covers the negative social effects of social media and is interspersed by a dramatized narrative surrounding a family of five who are increasingly affected by problematic social media use. The Social Dilemma premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, on January 26, 2020, and was released on Netflix on September 9, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. It received generally favorable reviews from critics, who praised its message and use of interviews with established tech experts but criticized the narrative, reenactments, and lack of nuance in addressing technological problems.
Synopsis The Social Dilemma examines the impact of social media and technology platforms on users, focusing on persuasive design, data collection, and algorithmic prediction. The film argues that companies track and analyze users' online activity in order to build artificial intelligence systems that predict and influence behavior. In the documentary, Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, says that tech companies pursue three primary goals:
The engagement goal: to increase usage and make sure users continue scrolling. The growth goal: to ensure users are coming back and inviting friends, who invite even more friends. The advertisement goal: to make sure that while the above two goals are happening, the companies are also making as much money as possible from advertisements. Harris summed this up with the warning: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product", paraphrasing earlier insights from Television Delivers People, Tom Johnson, and Andrew Lewis. Another interviewee, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business, brings up the concerns of mental health in relation to social media. The film also discusses the dangers of fake news. Harris argues that this is a "disinformation-for-profit business model" and that companies make more money by allowing "unregulated messages to reach anyone for the best price". In the end credits, the interviewees propose ways the audience can take action to fight back, such as turning off notifications, never accepting recommended videos on YouTube, using search engines that do not retain search history, and establishing rules in the house on cell phone usage.
Narrative The documentary uses a fictional dramatized narrative to illustrate the issues discussed, centering around "a middle-class, average American family" whose members each interface with the internet differently: Ben, a teenager who falls deeper into social media addiction and online radicalization; Isla, an adolescent who develops depression and low self-esteem from social media's unrealistic beauty standards; Cassandra, an older teenager who does not have a mobile phone and is depicted as being free from online manipulation; and their mother and stepfather, who try to curb their children's screen time but do not fully understand the factors of the situation. The narrative depicts Ben and Isla as they are increasingly affected by social media and internet addictions, driven by the Engagement, Growth, and Advertisement AIs, represented by anthropomorphized tech executives in a "behind-the-screen" control room who find ways to keep their users as addicted to social media as possible while only viewing them as depersonalized avatars, with little concern for theirs or society's well-being. The narrative starts with Isla ignoring her mother's requests to set the table, followed by her becoming depressed after her appearance is criticized on social media. After Cassandra criticizes Isla and Ben's problematic smartphone use, their mother proposes locking everyone's phones in a safe so they can have dinner together, but when one phone receives a notification, Isla tries to open the safe and ultimately breaks it open with a tool, damaging Ben's phone screen. In return for a new phone screen, Ben promises his mother he will not use his phone for a week, but the AIs, confused as to why he is suddenly inactive, draw him back in by sending him a notification that his ex has started a new relationship, prompting Ben to break his promise and doomscroll in an attempt to cope. The AIs begin recommending him radical centrist content to keep him engaged, which quickly devolve into propaganda and conspiracy theories by the anti-democratic "Extreme Center" movement, radicalizing Ben and affecting his daily life to the point of near-isolation. Ultimately, Ben attends an Extreme Center rally that escalates when similarly radicalized counter-protestors arrive. Cassandra learns Ben is there and searches for him, but both are detained by riot police. At the end of the narrative, the AIs merge into one entity while Ben's avatar becomes a human representation of himself, and they stare at each other.
Cast
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