The Social Dilemma is a documentary-drama hybrid that takes a deep look into what our society is going through with the constant growth of social media and technology. We meet many tech experts who actually had a part in creating platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. — and they let us know about their growing concerns for society as technology evolves.
I would say it would be hard to watch this movie and not have at least a few different points that resonate with the viewer. From notifications getting your attention, to the distortion of your self-worth — there were quite a few moments that hit home. Something that really stood out to me was when speaking about propagandists utilizing Facebook to basically control their audience and the population. According to Renee Diresta, “it’s not that extreme propagandists haven’t existed before, it’s that they now have the ability to spread manipulative narratives with ease and not a lot of money”. I personally think we have seen this happen right here in the United States. We see political extremists sharing information that is false and people are eating it right up. Our country has been extremely divided politically and we can look to places like Facebook and Twitter that perpetuate that consistent divide.
In terms of social media distorting the view we have of ourselves and our relationships, I can absolutely say I have experienced this. We are judging our attractiveness, our popularity, and our success based on the amount of likes we get or the amount of followers we have. Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, states that we as humans have evolved to make sure that people like us and care about us. But we were not evolved to be aware of what thousands of people think of us at one time. He adds that we were not meant to have social approval tossed at us every 5 minutes, that is not part of our evolution. Hearing Tristan say this really hit home for me. We aren’t meant to take on this type of acceptance or criticism. Up until 10 years ago, your interactions were in person or over the phone. Now we have hundreds of people commenting on our lives, our looks, or lack thereof. We also watch people make assumptions on our lifestyles. People don’t like this type of clothing, so they post about it on their personal page, making those who do like that type of clothing feel bad about their style choices. I think this is something that everyone goes through in some capacity. Some people may be affected by it more than others, but I do think we all experience this in some way.
Something to add onto this, according to Jonathan Haidt, is that people my age were the first group of people to get social media in middle school. This was something that changed the world for me. We had parents who had no clue what this social media thing was, but we as middle schoolers were jumping right into it. This was something our parents couldn’t control or guide, we just had to figure it out on our own. To see the numbers mentioned about girls ending up in hospitals or even committing suicide should be SO alarming to us, but we are looking right past it.
According to Andima Fernando, who is the co-founder for the Center for Humane Technology, computer processing power has gone up about a trillion times since the 1960s. Our human brains have evolved not at all since then. This should set off some major red flags. It makes total sense that we need to ask ourselves, “how do we start to create a healthier relationship with technology”? “How do we not become so incredible overwhelmed, even though it is so easy to become overwhelmed?” The Center for Humane Technology gives us some extremely good tips to help us take control of our social media and technology intake.
- Turn Off Notifications — red is considered a trigger color that grabs our attention right away. If we turn off our notifications, we will reduce the need to open apps.
2. Remove Toxic Apps — Anything that we become overly addicted too or gives us bad feelings should be removed. Personally, this one sounds a little more difficult. As someone who grew up in the social media age, deleting these things is not easy. I instead would suggest a time limit. This can be done directly through our settings that asks us how much time we want to spend on a specific app. When you hit that time limit, it will lock the app unless you manually go in and unlock it.
3. Eliminate Outrage from your feed — it is important to unfollow outrage-chasing voices or groups on social media platforms. These sites pollute our cultural environment with hate, clickbait and outrage.
There are a lot of other really solid suggestions on the Center for Humane Technology’s website. It’s something we should all sit with and make an active effort to try to have a healthier relationship with technology.
After watching this documentary, I would suggest it to everyone. A lot of the information is stuff we already know. A lot of it seems like common sense. But even though it may be common sense, sometimes we need this information laid out in front of us to understand the impact. Hopefully, after watching this documentary, I and many others can begin to work on having a healthier relationship with technology and social media.
