Netflix’s The Social Dilemma Exposes the “Simultaneous Dystopia and Utopia” of Social Media

Netflix’s new docudrama, The Social Dilemma, holds a mirror up to a society shaped and changed by social media. It also takes a close look at the tech giants that designed these platforms to be as effective and profitable as possible. Directed by Jeff Orlowski, The Social Dilemma combines interviews with ex-Silicon Valley executives with archival news footage, interspersed with a dramatized narrative storyline that follows an American family grappling with their own social media usage. From the mouths of those that created some of the most influential platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, we learn not only how the social media landscape has been intentionally created to influence and manipulate its users, but also how the unforeseen consequences of an ever-connected world have led to deteriorations in mental health and threats to modern democracy. 

With credit to the filmmakers as well and the interviewees, The Social Dilemma really excels in making relatively difficult technical practices and nuanced business models easily understandable and dissectible for the average viewer while retaining the importance and urgency of the content. In framing social media platforms as online marketplaces of human product The Social Dilemma has for the first time given me, as a media consumer and a media student, cause for concern over the way my data, and in a sense my very self, is nothing more than a means to a profitable end. 

The film begins with the topic that is most commonly brought up when discussing the pitfalls of social media - our data; how it’s used, how it’s sold, and how it’s manipulated. To be frank, I have personally always been in the camp of people that really didn’t care if my data was being stolen or if my online behaviors were being monitored. I was always of the mindset that since I was not doing anything wrong, dangerous, or illegal online, I didn’t really care if some tech CEO across the country knew how many cat videos I watched on Youtube or how often I searched for sad songs on Spotify. However, where The Social Dilemma succeeds is in framing the business models of big tech as a matter of principle and as the newest iteration of a broken capitalist system that values corporations over individuals. What is often overlooked, and what is astutely pointed out by Aza Raskin, a former employee of Firefox & Mozilla Labs and the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, is that while we as individuals do not pay to use social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, those companies are still being monetized. How? Because advertisers are the ones paying for the product. In this way, we advertisers, not individuals are the customers, and we the people are the product. Through this lens, the conventional way with which we understand and sometimes scoff at the idea of our data being stolen is challenged. It is not as simple as our online purchasing history being used to predict what we will purchase next. On a much deeper level, our deepest emotions and behaviors that may even be unrecognized by ourselves are monitored and dissected to create profit for advertisers. 

The next portion of the film focuses on the effects of social media on mental health. While I personally believe that social media has measurable effects on users of all ages, The Social Dilemma focuses mostly on its effects on tweens and teens - emphasizing that the creators of these platforms are not child psychologists and are therefore not equipped with the knowledge necessary or even the goal of protecting children from the more insidious effects of social media. Just as the big tech executives are not equipped to protect its users, the human brain is also not equipped to handle the constant cycle of social approval that is created and reinforced by the likes, comments, and reactions that curate a facade of perfection on social media. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business presents startling and shocking statistics regarding how cases of depression and anxiety, self harm, and suicide, in girls and young women specifically, have skyrocketed since the onset of social media in the late 2000s. Having first-hand experience of these effects and with the topic of mental health being extremely important to me, I personally wish that the film had spent more than approximately five to seven minutes on this aspect. In my opinion, the dramatized narrative storyline could have been cut completely in lieu of expanding on issues of psychology and mental health, which I believe has a far more direct and dangerous effect on an individual level than the capitalization of our data, which had about the first forty minutes of the film dedicated to it. The storyline being portrayed through the dramatizations was mostly inconsequential and relatively boring to me, as it did not show anything that was not already being expressed by the interviewees or shown through the included news footage. From my view, this is one of the cases where reality is more effective and interesting than fiction, so the dramaticized scenes felt relatively forced, out of place, and antithetical to the overall tone of the rest of the film. 

The last distinct section of The Social Dilemma analyzes the increasing prevalence of fake news online as well as the ways in which social technologies are being dangerously misappropriated into tools to manipulate and polarize individuals, groups, and even governments. Perhaps it is the context of an unprecedented election cycle and a global pandemic, but this section proved to be the most thought provoking, as a consumer of media as well as as someone hoping to work in the industry, evoking questions of free speech and the global responsibility of big tech. The main argument of the film is effectively summed up by Rashida Richardson, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. She states, “we are all simply operating on a different set of facts. When that happens at scale, you’re no longer able to recon with or even consume information that contradicts with the worldview you’ve created.” Social platforms allow for a never-ending cycle of confirmation bias where your timeline or feed is filled only with people, institutions, and news that aligns with a user’s point of view. The ability for advertisers to target specific audiences that engage with certain ideas, candidates, theories, articles, etc.. not only perpetuates this cycle, but allows for the rise of dangerous conspiracies like Pizzagate, which alleged that high ranking Democratic Party officials were running a child trafficking ring out of the basement of a Washington DC pizzeria. The Social Dilemma presents a compelling argument that the increasing polarization of individuals can be accredited to the fact that people simply are not seeing the same information as those who hold opposite beliefs. What masquerades as willful ignorance is actually a byproduct of social media platforms’ legitimate algorithms. Foreign powers are not “hacking” democratic elections, they are taking advantage of legitimate business models that allow for any type of information to be presented for a price. This portion of the film specifically excels in its use of archival news footage that effectively visualizes the real world ramification of the theories presented.

For me, both sides of this argument are dangerous to the essence of our democracy. On one side, foreign powers as well as any average person with nefarious intentions can spread misinformation easily within the business model of big tech. On the other hand, how do we stop this without essentially limiting free speech? Where is the line drawn between theories that should be allowed to be voiced, and lies spread for dangerous purposes? I don’t have an answer for that, and I wish that the film would have delved further into these essential questions of our democracy, rather than just suggesting rules and regulations that offer fiscal incentives to big tech to act responsibly. 

Perhaps it is the cynic in me, or perhaps it is the media student in me, but having learned that every new technology in history has been met with panic, I find it hard to come to a concrete solution for the effects of social media presented by The Social Dilemma. While I do not doubt the existence of these effects, part of me wonders if as time goes on, we will learn to grapple with them in the same way that people learned that ghosts were not talking to them through their radios and that their microwaves would not fry their brains. The film distinguishes the social media landscape from past technological innovations because processing power is increasing at a rate not only faster than the human brain, but faster than any technology in history. Still, The Social Dilemma was created and exists within this specific social moment, and I believe that a more accurate analysis of the implications of big tech will not be possible until we are a bit farther removed from its inception. Nevertheless, it forces aspiring media professionals like myself to take a long, hard look on how we would like to conduct ourselves in this industry whilst balancing our own success with maintaining a sense of ethics, morals, and global responsibility.