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The Social Dilemma

The 2020 film, The Social Dilemma, is a cultural production that features a wide variety of technologists and researchers who are participating in this cause in order to spread awareness about the power that big tech has over the influence of teenagers' lives, worldly happenings, and the psychological effect of so many individuals. The film unveils the tactics and schemes that big tech companies use in order to make those issues a reality to users around the world. The film depicts a family who is being taken over by social media and it shows that grasp that it has on the three young teens in the family. One struggles with addiction to the phone, the other begins to question her self appearance after she is bullied on the internet, and the last becomes entangled with false narratives on worldly topics. This topic is relevant both socially and culturally, especially today because technology and social media are growing industries that are going to be around for the rest of our lives and if it can be made a safer place for everyone then there might be some hope at a brighter less socially addictive future. The purpose of this blog series is to inform readers about the issue that social media has on our agency and privacy and to encourage anyone who uses social media excessively to take a break. The main points that I want to address in my blog series will be broken up into three categories. The first will talk about how our attention to the app or how often we use it is the product itself, meaning that we respond to every ding we hear, leading users to often find themselves spending more time on our phone than anticipated. The second point I will address is how the addiction to the apps is an underlying built-in feature. The final point that I am going to talk about is how easily people are influenced by what they see on the internet without any factual evidence to back it up. This addiction has altered the way that teenagers communicate and choose to view topics because the information that they are basing their opinions on is from social media. People should put some thought into the evidence that is being presented in front of them because they are most likely on social media, and they should understand that it can do more harm than good on their mentality. The overall purpose is to inform the reader how big tech companies can manipulate its users without them even noticing.

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Craving Attention

Our attention to social media and how often we use it, is the product itself meaning that we respond to every “ding” we hear and find ourselves spending more time on our phone than anticipated. The film highlights the point that if our phone notices a long period of inactivity then it will generate a notification to get users back on their phone. This is what makes it so hard to do one simple task when users go on their phones because they subsequently get distracted by other posts or news stories keeping them on their phones for longer. The producers of the film “claim that the manipulation of human behavior for profit is coded into these companies with Machiavellian precision: Infinite scrolling and push notifications keep users constantly engaged; personalized recommendations use data not just to predict but also to influence our actions, turning users into easy prey for advertisers and propagandists” (Girish). This is factual evidence that was found to be true when the producers were researching for this film. It is something that many researchers are discovering today and are urgently trying to promote against in the fear that humanity is going to be completely taken over by social media in a matter of years. People tend to unconsciously crave having their phone in their hand or hearing any “ding” that will come from it and as we’ve learned it’s all because that is what big tech companies are programming our brains to do. The film makes this point relatable by showing the silent dinners of the family being portrayed in the film and highlighting the horrific measures that the children of the family go to in order to get back on their phones. It is an odd sight that gets many people thinking about how often they give in the “ding” they hear on their phone. Our attention and willingness to respond to every notification on our phones is what keeps big tech alive, but unfortunately hurts the rest of humanity.

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The Addiction is Real

Many people who use social media tend to not realize or want to admit that they are addicted to their phones. This addiction is fostered by the tactics that big tech companies use. The need to have something that will entertain you for multiple hours in the day is what is harming the psychological development of so many young teenagers. The Social Dilemma talks about the specific strategies that tech companies use in order to feed our growing addiction. “The Social Dilemma focuses on how big social media companies manipulate users by using algorithms that encourage addiction to their platforms” (Barnet, Bossio). The algorithms that big tech companies have made are being used to make the addiction to social media persist. Big tech companies use users as an experiment to see how they will all respond to what is being presented on different apps. The companies learn and grow from how users interact with the app and then they come up with better incentives to keep them on the app the next time they open it. Apple products do not hesitate to keep our addiction hidden and even show the amount of screen time we use on our phones in a day and compare it against a week. This information might scare some people for a minute but within a couple of days they are right back to using their phone like normal. In the film the youngest daughter's phone is put into a container and she is not allowed to use it for an hour however once her mother is not looking her daughter takes a hammer to the box shattering it and retrieving her phone once again. Humanities addiction to their phones has been equated to drug use because the problem is so persistent and takes great action to stop. The addiction that people have to social media is what is causing a lack in real human interaction and leading to a world that is only alive on the internet.

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Influence Without Fact

Everything that is seen on the internet is perceived to be true and this can have a drastic effect on the population if too many people believe everything that they see. The film points out that social media will present people with a false narrative that may cause them to look at themselves or worldly occurrences in a different way. “The spread of potentially harmful information became so prevalent during the pandemic that many sites, including Facebook and Twitter, have started flagging and, in some cases, removing, content not based in facts” (Fullerton). Big tech companies have had to take big measures to ensure that there was not widespread panic due to false information being distributed on platforms. It is a lesson that you should never believe something that you read on the internet unless it comes from a credible source you trust, and many people learned that the hard way amidst the COVID – 19 pandemic.  In the film the oldest daughter is persuaded to go to a rally for something that she has no ties to or personal affiliation. When the protests get violent she is one of the individuals who gets arrested even though she was on the sidelines. If she had not gone, then she would not have been put in harm's way but she “followed the crowd” and went along with it. If she had done more research she might have been able to realize that it was not going to be a peaceful protest. Another example that does not directly fall under the category of false information is promoting a false lifestyle or depiction of yourself. This is something that one of the daughters struggles with because she is a young teenager and thus very susceptible to everything that people comment on her posts. Social media is a blessing and a curse because it allows for the distribution of facts at a lightning speed rate but it also allows anyone to post information without any boundaries.

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In Conclusion...

The cultural production, The Social Dilemma, proves that social media can have a worse influence than a good one and that big tech companies can make this happen without us even knowing. We crave attention from our phones and our phones crave attention from us too. Big tech companies make it easy to have an addiction to social media because they make everything so easily accessible and use tactics to make us crave more from these tiny machines. Social media has also led many people to become susceptible or gullible toward false facts that other people with no authority post on the internet. All of these main points are ones that are spoken about in the film The Social Dilemma. It is a promising film that I would recommend to everyone because of how transparent the film and the technologists being interviewed are. Social media while it can have its benefits also has many downfalls that can hurt society and the growing minds of young teenagers.