The docudrama The Social Dilemma brings together a number of former social media CEOs, business developers, and programmers to collectively sound the alarm on the effects of the technology they helped propagate.
Tristan Harris, computer scientist and president of the Center for Humane Technology, serves as the central speaker in the documentary. Former executives like Tim Kendall and Sean Parker and engineers like Justin Rosenstein also feature alongside concerned psychologists, business professors, data scientists, and venture capitalists.
At the beginning of the movie, all of the interviewees are asked, “What’s the problem?” Each interview subject struggles to respond. Over the course of the documentary, the answer becomes clear: the common business model of social media corporations is designed to make money by keeping users looking at their platforms for a maximum amount of time. This, the ex-social media developers say, is the root of the myriad problems highlighted in the first three minutes of the documentary, including addiction, body dysmorphia, disinformation, radicalization, and civil unrest.
What makes The Social Dilemma a docudrama as opposed to a documentary is the way in which it incorporates a dramatized illustration of these effects. These scenes portray family tension around screen-time rules, a daughter bullied on Instagram, a child indoctrinated by extremist propaganda. In addition to following these plots, the film personifies the algorithms as supervillains scheming to keep users on platforms as long as possible. Unfortunately, the corny family scenes are off-putting and the strange dramatization of the algorithms only serves to further obscure the algorithms and engineers it represents.
Corny dramatizations aside, the presentation of the eponymous “social dilemma” is persuasive. If the fact that the majority of the interviewees found themselves addicted to the very technology they created and don’t permit their children to use social media doesn’t raise red flags, the ethical concerns around the very structure of the social media business model should. Jaron Lanier, author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, uses the analogy of a giant computer in which all of its users are merely nodes and that users really are treated as the means to an end of turning a profit, even at the cost of their wellbeing. The Catholic view of human dignity cries out against this disregard for the wellbeing of others as “the cause and the end of every social institution” (St. John XXIII, [Mater et Magistra], 219).
If the utilization of millions of users for the purpose of increasing the wealth of a select few doesn’t concern you, then maybe the threat that social media poses to democracy might. According to the documentary, “fake news” and conspiracy theories propagated by algorithms designed to feed people content with. They agree these echo chambers have contributed to the polarization observable in the U.S. today. Outside the U.S., one need only look as far as Hong Kong or Myanmar to see how social media is used to suppress human rights and degrade human dignity when wielded by authoritarian regimes or violent sectarians.
The Catechism teaches that humans are built for communion with God and man: “The human person needs to live in society. Society is not for him an extraneous addition but a requirement of his nature” (CCC 1879). Does social media help develop our capacity to love one another? The producers and interviewees of The Social Dilemma would suggest that as long as its business model treats humans as an “extractable resource,” the answer will be no. Some are hopeful that this business model could be reformed, but few see this happening without increased governmental regulation.
By the end of The Social Dilemma, one is left feeling hopeless. If you watch to the end of the film however, the interviews during the credits provide some hope and expert advice. Solutions range from deleting your social media accounts to using your voice on the platforms to call for stricter regulation of social media giants. The docudrama thoroughly presents harms of the current state of social media, but it presents no one clear answer to the “social dilemma” we collectively face. It is now streaming on Netflix.
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