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Why ‘the social dilemma’ on netflix is such an important film.

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There’s a girl staring into a mirror.

She has a bland expression on her face, but something's not quite right.

She keeps touching her hair as if she wants to push her ears in. Earlier that day, someone shared an elephant emoji on one of her social media posts. “Can your ears be any bigger?” the person asked in a comment. Maybe it didn’t register at first.

It does now. Looking into the mirror, she pushes her ear in again as a tear drops down her face. You feel the pain she’s experiencing from what was probably meant as a joke.

Sadly, it’s not a joke. This is a scene from the documentary film called The Social Dilemma on Netflix and it’s one of the most important movies the company has ever released, especially if you have kids. When I watched it, I took furious notes about who was speaking and what they said. That’s partly because I’m currently working on a book about good and bad habits, but mostly because it’s a riveting expose.

Look, I know how this all works. Watching the movie, I couldn’t help but think how all of this constant clicking, swiping, and liking has impacted our lives. I’ve covered social media since about 2008 when these apps debuted on mobile devices. 

I wrote about the dangers even back then. My own journey had a major false start. I created a Twitter account in about 2007 and posted a few article links, then noticed someone kept bashing my work over and over. I deleted that Twitter account and started over about six months later. It’s one reason my only option was @jmbrandonbb and not something a bit easier to find. Honestly, I didn’t want my full, real name to appear in the username after that initial foray.

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I’m quite a bit older than the middle schooler who appears in that documentary, and that scene is a re-creation that runs throughout the film as a way to depict what life is like now. Some people seem to hate it . To me, it’s spot on. The girl is an actor but I couldn’t help but wonder if the tears were genuine and based on real experiences. We’re all human. In one segment, the brilliant ethicist Tristan Harris notes that we were not really meant to receive feedback on what we do and say every five minutes.

The documentary is exposing some hard truths. It uses terms like surveillance capitalism and positive intermittent reinforcement that, quite honestly, if you don’t already know what they mean then you might already be lulled into the honeytrap. You might already be stuck in one.

“Social media isn’t a tool that’s just waiting to be used,” says Harris. “It has its own goals and it has its own means of pursuing them by using your own psychology against you.”

In other words: The tool is alive. It knows you. It’s feeding you information you think you want and need but in reality is eliciting action and clicks as a way to fuel advertising.

The documentary does not soften any punches. It refers to us as lab rats in a way that is not meant to be funny anymore. We’re all rats at this point. We think it’s all about getting cheese as a reward and it’s harmless, but there is a lot more at stake. Not sure if you know this, but most lab rats don’t live a long and fruitful life.

I learned several other terms. Dopamine deficit state. A pleasure-pain balance. It’s like I’m being pulled out of the matrix, although I’ve known about the allure for some time. Most of us like the matrix, mostly because of the juicy steak .

Tools that are alive are the most dangerous. My view is that it’s time to start viewing digital media and other apps as part of the vast experiment that the movie is describing and to do something about it. There are quite a few methods to combat the allure of social media, but there is one you can do right now after reading this.

We know we’re clicking too much. We know it’s captivating. One simple step to consider: Grab your phone right now and look over your apps. Which one is capturing all of your attention right now? For the techies out there, you can actually find out. On an iPhone, for example, long-press on Settings, go to Battery, and scroll down to see your most used apps. This is not easy to admit, but lately mine has been Instagram. I’ve been documenting the book-writing process but I’m going to delete it for a month.

I’ll report back later on how this all went. If you deleted an app you have been using too much, that has been pulling you away from real life, drop me an email and explain why you use it so much. Let me know if you really did delete it, and what you hope to gain from this exercise. Let’s compare notes on our findings.

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The Social Dilemma

Where to watch.

Watch The Social Dilemma with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

Clear-eyed and comprehensive, The Social Dilemma presents a sobering analysis of our data-mined present.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Jeff Orlowski-Yang

Randy Fernando

Tristan Harris

Jeff Seibert

Bailey Richardson

Joe Toscano

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Related movie news.

Discover what’s hiding on the other side of your screen

We tweet, we like, and we share— but what are the consequences of our growing dependence on social media? This documentary-drama hybrid reveals how social media is reprogramming civilization with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations. 

“Easily one of the most talked-about docs at Sundance this year” — Variety

“it’s a call to arms that strives to provoke a real response from lawmakers, companies, and the public at large before it’s too late.” — Venture Beat

“ The Social Dilemma may finally convince you that we’re being watched, manipulated, and misled by unscrupulous platforms and attention-harvesting algorithms.” –Vanity Fair

Meet the subjects

The Social Dilemma features the voices of technologists, researchers and activists working to align technology with the interests of humanity.

Tristan Harris

Former Google Design Ethicist; Co-Founder & President of The Center for Humane Technology

Jaron Lanier

Computer scientist and founding father of virtual reality

Shoshana Zuboff

Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School; Author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”

Jeff Seibert

Former Senior Director of Product at Twitter

Roger McNamee

Early Facebook investor; Author of “Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe”

Former Head of User Experience at Mozilla; Inventor of the Infinite Scroll

Sandy Parakilas

Former Operations Manager at Facebook; Former Product Manager at Uber

Joe Toscano

Former Experience Design Consultant at Google; Author of “Automating Humanity”

Cynthia Wong

Former Senior Internet Researcher at Human Rights Watch

Tim Kendall

CEO of Moment; Former Director of Monetization at Facebook; Former President of Pinterest

Dr. Anna Lembke

Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine

Justin Rosenstein

Co-Founder of Asana and One Project; Former engineering lead at Facebook; Former product manager at Google

Cathy O’Neil

Data scientist; Author of “Weapons of Math Destruction”

Rashida Richardson

Rutgers Law School, Visiting Scholar; German Marshall Fund, Senior Fellow; A.I. Now Institute, Former Director of Policy Research

Randima (Randy) Fernando

Randima (Randy) Fernando, Co-Founder & Executive Director at The Center for Humane Technology

Guillaume Chaslot

Former software engineer at Google (YouTube); CEO at IntuitiveAI

Renée DiResta

Research Manager at Stanford Internet Observatory; Former Head of Policy at Data for Democracy

Alex Roetter

Former Senior VP of Engineering at Twitter

Bailey Richardson

Early Instagram employee; Partner at People & Company

Jonathan Haidt

Social psychologist at New York University; author of “The Righteous Mind”

Former Director of Corporate PR at Apple; Former Corporate Communications at Google

Meet the team

We are so thankful for the collaborative efforts of our extended cast and crew who brought The Social Dilemma to life and helped bring this pressing issue to the public.

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‘The Social Dilemma’ Review: Unplug and Run

This documentary from Jeff Orlowski explores how addiction and privacy breaches are features, not bugs, of social media platforms.

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By Devika Girish

That social media can be addictive and creepy isn’t a revelation to anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like. But in Jeff Orlowski’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,” conscientious defectors from these companies explain that the perniciousness of social networking platforms is a feature, not a bug.

They 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.

As in his documentaries about climate change, “Chasing Ice” and “Chasing Coral,” Orlowski takes a reality that can seem too colossal and abstract for a layperson to grasp, let alone care about, and scales it down to a human level. In “The Social Dilemma,” he recasts one of the oldest tropes of the horror genre — Dr. Frankenstein, the scientist who went too far — for the digital age.

In briskly edited interviews, Orlowski speaks with men and (a few) women who helped build social media and now fear the effects of their creations on users’ mental health and the foundations of democracy. They deliver their cautionary testimonies with the force of a start-up pitch, employing crisp aphorisms and pithy analogies.

“Never before in history have 50 designers made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people,” says Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google. Anna Lembke, an addiction expert at Stanford University, explains that these companies exploit the brain’s evolutionary need for interpersonal connection. And Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, delivers a chilling allegation: Russia didn’t hack Facebook; it simply used the platform.

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The Social Dilemma will terrify you into deleting your social media accounts

It's 2020 and we're all being manipulated, apparently.

Netflix 's new documentary The Social Dilemma attempts to expose the ways in which technology giants have manipulated human psychology to influence how we behave.

And if you think that sounds absolutely terrifying, you'd be right.

Social media and an endless catalogue of Apps have been integrated into the daily lives of many for years now. Facebook allows us to stay connected with friends and family around the world, Twitter gives us a read (for better and, sometimes, for very very worse) of what the public is feeling on any given subject, Uber can bring transport and food to our doors at the touch of a button.

While the negatives of such technological developments have been discussed before, from mental health implications to the looming question of data collection, The Social Dilemma goes behind the curtain of the biggest – and most profitable – tech companies, in a way not really presented before.

The documentary includes extensive on-camera interviews with former tech wizards from some of the biggest hitters (we're talking the likes of Facebook and Google). These are merged with a dramatised illustration of how algorithms work, as well as the hypothetical story of how such networks impacted one American family. When you put together all of the singular pieces of the puzzle, it makes for one disturbing bigger picture.

The Social Dilemma highlights the ways human behaviour and habits have been altered by the very existence of such technology. What's more, the functions that are built in – whether that be the introduction of tagging friends on Facebook, or the movement of pulling down and refreshing your feed – are claimed to have been designed specifically to encourage further engagement with such Apps, keeping you on them for longer.

But why do they want that and, more importantly, if we want to keep on scrolling then what's the problem?

As poignantly argued in The Social Dilemma, if you don't pay for the product – you are the product.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al are all free to use – but, according to this film, that doesn't mean we're not paying a price. Tech companies make billions out of our behaviour, monetising our daily activities.

On top of that, every action we make online is monitored and helps to build a picture of who we are as individuals: what we like, what we don't like, what makes us angry, what makes us sad... You get the idea.

According to the doc, this information feeds the algorithm, and informs what content we'll be served at a later date – again, with the aim of keeping us engaged for longer periods of time.

It doesn't stop with the individual either, as the ripple effects reach so much further. As a result of the algorithms and preferences, our individual social media feeds can become echo chambers – basically reaffirming everyone's worldview over and over, most worryingly perhaps even at the expense of objective truth.

An example that was put forward by the tech experts in The Social Dilemma was the flat-earth theory. Anyone that had previously shown an interest in conspiracy theory videos, or might have indicated that they would be more open to engaging in such content, would be more likely to be served something relating to flat-earthers.

This fosters an environment that can ease the spread of false facts and fake news, making it so that different groups of people are seeing (and therefore sure of) very different sets of 'truths'.

People's beliefs around issues can of course have real-world consequence, particularly when it comes to political affiliation. The Social Dilemma looked closely at those aligning with the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party in the United States, arguing that each 'side' had become further and further divided in more recent years. An argument was put forward that, as a result of the 'facts' that each believed, room for debate or constructive conversation was narrower – something that we can probably all relate to experiencing, in one way or another.

This is before we even move into the realm of 'election hacking' and social media's role in the sphere of political campaigning, which was also explored more specifically in The Great Hack documentary (centred around the Cambridge Analytica data hacking scandal) last year.

The Social Dilemma puts forward the compelling argument that, whether we're overtly aware of it or not, technology companies and social media networks pose a very real threat to our communities and our democracies. As things stand, there's very little in the way of regulation or responsibility being demanded of such corporations. The law is some way behind the advancements.

The Social Dilemma ended on a slightly more optimistic note, switching it up to " our social dilemma" and encouraging viewers to reclaim their own technology usage, while highlighting that real change often comes as a result of public pressure.

Maybe this documentary is the beginning of a wider wake-up call, and will drive towards more positive innovation?

But for now, let us quickly ask you how many notifications you have had flash up on your phone while you were reading this article?

The Social Dilemma is available on Netflix.

Digital Spy has launched its first-ever digital magazine with exclusive features, interviews, and videos. Access this edition with a 1-month free trial, only on Apple News+ .

Interested in Digital Spy's weekly newsletter? Sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox.

TV Editor, Digital Spy Laura has been watching television for over 30 years and professionally writing about entertainment for almost 10 of those.  Previously at LOOK and now heading up the TV desk at the UK's biggest TV and movies site Digital Spy, Laura has helped steer conversations around some of the most popular shows on the box. Laura has appeared on Channel 5 News and radio to talk viewing habits and TV recommendations.  As well as putting her nerd-level Buffy knowledge to good use during an IRL meet with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laura also once had afternoon tea with One Direction, has sat around the fire pit of the Love Island villa, spoken to Sir David Attenborough about the world's oceans and even interviewed Rylan from inside the Big Brother house (housemate status, forever pending). 

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What Is The Social Dilemma: 6 Things To Know About The Netflix Documentary Before You Watch

As you have probably heard by now, Netflix recently released a documentary under the name The Social Dilemma that touches on one of the most significant advances in all of human history — the advent of social media. This thought-provoking, interesting, and downright terrifying film will hopefully one day be discussed alongside other pivotal documentaries like Harlan County, USA , An Inconvenient Truth , and Blackfish .

And ever since The Social Dilemma premiered on Netflix near the beginning of September 2020, the documentary has remained in the streaming platform's "Top 10" list, but undoubtedly, there are some people out there who either don't know what it's about or worried about the subject matter. I'll admit, it's a terrifying and sometimes hard to watch 90 minutes, but it's definitely one you shouldn't miss. With that being said, here six things to know about the Netflix documentary before you decide to watch it for yourself.

What The Social Dilemma Is About

Before I got into the nitty-gritty of The Social Dilemma , it is probably best to explain what the documentary is about on a more general level. Okay, the film, which is more a documentary-drama hybrid (more on that in a bit) than anything else examines the various ways social media and social networking companies have manipulated human psychology to rewire the human brain and what it means for society in general. Through a series of interviews with Silicon Valley engineers who designed the technologies they now fear, along with discussions with various tech and psychology experts, The Social Dilemma offers an eye-opening look at a world that so few really understand.

The Documentary Contains Scripted Portions To Further Illustrate The Points It Makes

Throughout The Social Dilemma , various former Facebook, Google, and Apple engineers go into great detail into the ways tech giants are manipulating their users through a range of services (Facebook's "Like" button and notification system, as well as Google Inbox's architecture, come up time and time again), but a lot of the topics and ideas can sometimes be hard to fully grasp.

In order to further illustrate the points that are being made throughout The Social Dilemma , director Jeff Orlowski utilizes a documentary-drama hybrid that features extensive scripted sections centering around a family that has been nearly torn apart because of social media's firm grasp on their attention and need to be connected to the rest of the world even though it means sacrificing meaningful relationships with your loved ones. Things kick up a notch when the son, Ben ( Skyler Gisondo ) falls into a conspiratorial rabbit hole before being "recommended" even more extreme political videos and even gun advertisements by a representation of Facebook's AI model portrayed by Mad Men 's Vincent Kartheiser.

The Social Dilemma Breaks Down How Social Media Companies Take Advantage Of Users, Especially Teenagers

All age groups are discussed in The Social Dilemma , but one of the most striking sections of the documentary is the one that touches on the vulnerability of teenagers who use platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and multiple others every single day and have been molded by social media's influences. This section of the film is highlighted by statistics on depression, anxiety, and even suicide rates of teenagers that correlate with the rise of social media. This is even more striking when the documentary cuts between experts and a dramatization of a depressed teenager portrayed by Sophia Hammons in one of the most masterful performances of the entire dramatic section.

One Of The Documentary's Main Subjects, Tristan Harris, Was Called The Conscience Of Silicon Valley

A lot of what is discussed throughout The Social Dilemma comes from the work of one of the film's main subjects, Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google who later help found the Center for Humane Technology. The crew behind the documentary follows Harris around for a large section of the film while he prepares for a presentation on ways tech and social media companies can avoid practices that sell their users' data to the highest bidder, as well as making their projects less addictive. When Harris was still with Google (on the Google Inbox team), he sent a presentation to several of his colleagues that suggested that the big tech companies (Google included) should take the initiative and prevent a society in which everyone is buried in their phones.

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Tristan Harris eventually left Google to focus on creating the Center for Humane Technology (formerly known as Time Well Spent) to help further spread his message about tech giants respecting their users' attention, privacy, and most of all, free will. Shortly after starting his non-profit, Harris was featured in an Atlantic profile that called him the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience. And judging by the way Harris spends much of The Social Dilemma arguing against social media's tight-grip on our psyches, they're probably right.

Be Prepared To Feel The Urge To Deactivate Your Social Accounts

There were multiple times while watching The Social Dilemma where I wanted to get rid of all my social media accounts, turn off my phone, and throw it out the window. And while that's admittedly a little dramatic, the film will more than likely have that same effect on you. When you have tech engineers admitting that their former companies don't really have a full understanding on the artificial intelligences they have built to run platforms like Facebook and Google, you start to feel like you're entering The Terminator or something. It's like we've opened Pandora's box that has been placed behind a floodgate that we can't seem to close.

The Social Dilemma Is Being Called 'Eye Opening' But Is Criticized For Not Offering Solutions

The consensus surrounding The Social Dilemma is that it's one of the most important and consequential documentaries to be released in recent memory. The Chicago Tribune praised the documentary for the manner in which it exposes the damage companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have done to society in their need to retain users and gain new ones at the same time. The film is called eye-opening for its in-depth look at social media practices in an ABC News review, explaining that viewers will probably want to throw their phones in the trash before throwing the garbage can through the window of a tech executive.

Despite being praised for its uncovering of nefarious social media practices, The Social Dilemma is being criticized by some for not going far enough and not offering much in terms of solutions for the industry's problems. A CNBC review points out that at the end of it all, few engineers that designed the tools that have changed our psychological makeup offer ways to fix the problem instead of telling the viewer to be more diligent online.

Before I finally decided to press "play" and start The Social Dilemma , I asked myself if it was worth watching and if I should allow myself to get all worked up. And although I was in a "mood" after the credits finally rolled on the documentary, I am glad I ended up learning more about social media platforms that I use every day. It's shocking, sometimes appalling, and frightening throughout, but The Social Dilemma is something you shouldn't skip.

Philip grew up in Louisiana (not New Orleans) before moving to St. Louis after graduating from Louisiana State University-Shreveport. When he's not writing about movies or television, Philip can be found being chased by his three kids, telling his dogs to stop barking at the mailman, or chatting about professional wrestling to his wife. Writing gigs with school newspapers, multiple daily newspapers, and other varied job experiences led him to this point where he actually gets to write about movies, shows, wrestling, and documentaries (which is a huge win in his eyes). If the stars properly align, he will talk about For Love Of The Game being the best baseball movie of all time.

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‘The Social Dilemma’ Trailer: Netflix Doc Details How Social Media Manipulates Its Users

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To some, social media is evil, and Netflix ’s upcoming “ The Social Dilemma ” documentary is going to tell you why. The streaming service unveiled the trailer for its upcoming title, which premieres September 9 and promises an in-depth — and thoroughly harrowing — look at how social media platforms and algorithms manipulate individuals and contribute to issues such as viral conspiracy theories, teenage mental health issues, rampant misinformation, and political polarization.

The film’s interviewees include Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology; the co-inventor of the Facebook “Like” button, Justin Rosenstein; Tim Kendall, former President of Pinterest and former Director of Monetization at Facebook; Cathy O’Neil, author of “Weapons of Math Destruction”; and Rashida Richardson, Director of Policy at the AI Now Institute.

“The Social Dilemma” is directed by Jeff Orlowski, who previously created hit nature documentaries such as “Chasing Ice” and “Chasing Coral.”

“The algorithms control what we see, when we see it, how we see it, with no regard for the truth or for humanity,” Orlowski said in a statement. “These platforms are driven by a business model that values attention above quality, and the algorithms will systematically push users to more and more polarized and extreme thinking in search of anything that will keep us engaged.”

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich praised “The Social Dilemma” in his B+ review out of Sundance in January and noted that the documentary offered a compelling argument for viewers to begin thinking about their social media usage differently.

“Is ‘The Social Dilemma’ persuasive enough to convince a MAGA zealot to stop binge-watching Ben Shapiro nonsense and buy a subscription to a newspaper? It’s hard to say,” Ehrlich said in his review. “But the film will definitely make you more cognizant of your own behavior — not just of how you use the internet, but how the internet uses you. And it will do so in a way that feels less like an intervention than it does a wake-up call; Orlowski and his subjects recognize how the internet has created a simultaneous utopia and dystopia, and they aren’t under any delusions that we’re able to wish it away. Their documentary isn’t instructive so much as directional, and thereby most fascinating for the implications it leaves you to consider on your own time.”

Check out the trailer for “The Social Dilemma” below:

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‘Social Dilemma’ documentary has people rethinking social media

By Sydnee Reddy November 2, 2020

Being one of the most talk-about documentaries of the fall, “The Social Dilemma” tackles how smartphones and social networks have manipulated human psychology to influence human behavior.

The Netflix documentary-drama “The Social Dilemma,” directed by Jeff Orlowsk, on Netflix at the beginning of September. It was on the streaming platforms “Top 10 list” for a while when it premiered. “The Social Dilemma” examines the many ways social media and social networking companies have influenced human psychology to rewire the brain and the impact it had on these three parts of society. The film describes mental health, democracy and discrimination as the three dilemmas.

Throughout the documentary-drama, they feature many psychology experts to interviews with ex-Silicon Valley engineers from various companies such as Facebook and Google.

The engineers in the film are people who designed the technology, so they go into detail about the ways the tech giants are manipulating their users through a range of different services. For example, the creator of the infamous “like” button on Facebook, Justin Rosenstein, discusses how he created the button to “spread positivity,” but it ended up making people feel bad about themselves. The film explains the effects the button had on mental health especially young teens.

Some of the people being interviewed in the film had more of a broad picture. “If we go down the status quo, for let’s say another 20 years,” he states, “we probably destroy our civilization through willful ignorance … fail to meet the challenge of climate change … degrade the world’s democracies so they fall into some type of autocratic dysfunction … ruin the global economy. We probably don’t survive,” Jaron Lainer, considered the founder of VR, said.

Some of the points and ideas being made in the film are hard to grasp, so to easily depict the points that are being made, the director added scripted sections throughout the film centered around them.

One of the centers of the scripted sections around a family that has been torn apart because of social media grabs on their attention. and also the son getting sucked into conspiratorial rabbit hole extreme political videos on his social media which highlights the discrimination dilemma. Another fictional part of the film highlights the vulnerability of teenagers who use social media platforms. The film uses a teenage girl and the effect it had on her mental health.

According to the director Jeff Orlowski, the film was made after he directed two films about climate change and saw another threat to humanity.” We saw a direct a parallel between the threat posed by the fossil fuel industry and the threat posed by our technology platforms. The climate change of culture,” an invisible force that is shaping how the world gets its information and understands the truth. Our hope has always been to work on big issues, and we now see “the social dilemma” as a problem beneath all our other problems,” Orlowski said on socialdilemina.com , the official website for the film.

The film is important because it highlights how even those platforms and technology have benefited us in so many ways such as easily staying connected with family and friends. These platforms and technology have also had a huge negative effect on the world.“I say it’s a good thing because people can learn certain topics or events they never heard of before for example during the past few months people have been learning more about black history. I say it’s also a bad thing because social media tends to lead people into believing certain things that aren’t true,” Troy Norman, sophomore graphic design major, said.

Overall the ratings and reviews of the film have been very good. The film was rated a 7.7 out of 10 on IMDb and 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes .

“The Social Dilemma” is remarkably effective in sounding the alarm about the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology into our social lives and beyond. Orlowski’s film is itself not spared by the phenomenon it scrutinizes.” Devika Girish from the New York Times said. Even with a film with such great overall feedback, there were some unanswered questions. “But after all these tech figures’ explanations about how effective they and their companies were at hijacking human psychology for profit— the rhetoric falls a little flat,” Michelle Gao from CNBC said. Shouldn’t the tech industry itself be able to do more? “The Social Dilemma” still seems to put the onus on us, the users, when it should be asking more of its participants, ” said Gao

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Why The Social Dilemma is the most important documentary of our times

Netflix’s new docu-drama doesn’t just recruit silicon valley whistleblowers to explain why they regret building the likes of facebook and twitter, says alexi duggins , it lets them explain why they might have unwittingly started society’s destruction – and how to prevent it, article bookmarked.

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I f you’ve logged onto social media recently, you may have noticed the odd clue that all is not right in the world. Credulous corona-spiracists spoiling for punch-ups with 5G masts . Honking clowns of governments who rule by fomenting voter conflict. The constant feeling that you’re being boiled alive in a cauldron of hate. Extremism. Fake news. Mental health crises. And, of course, the main problem: the fact that you logged into social media in the first place.

These are the subjects of Netflix ’s brilliant new 90-minute docu-drama, The Social Dilemma – and it might be the most important watch of recent years. The film, which debuted at Sundance Film Festival in January, takes a premise that’s unlikely to set the world alight with its ingenuity – particularly as it’s much the same as that of Netflix stablemate The Great Hack , ie that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al aren’t exactly creating a utopia.  

Where its brilliance lies is in laying bare a vast range of complex problems with compelling clarity. Its masterstroke is in recruiting the very Silicon Valley insiders that built these platforms to explain their terrifying pitfalls – which they’ve realised belatedly. You don’t get a much clearer statement of social media’s dangers than an ex-Facebook executive’s claim that: “In the shortest time horizon I’m most worried about civil war.”

The commonly held belief that social media companies sell users’ data is quickly cast aside – the data is actually used to create a sophisticated psychological profile of you. What they’re selling is their ability to manipulate you, or as one interviewee puts it: “It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behaviour and perception. It’s the only thing for them to make money from: changing what you do, how you think, who you are.”  

The idea that we can ignore the effects of social media or avoid its influence is dismissed out of hand. We head into classes at Stanford University, whose psychology professors teach ways that tech can be used to reprogramme the way your brain works until addiction results. It’s even worse for teens, we hear, sparking a must-watch segment that feels like the digital equivalent of when Jamie’s School Dinners pointed out that parents should stop their children gorging on turkey twizzlers.

“Social media starts to dig deeper and deeper down into the brain stem and take over kids’ sense of self-worth and identity,” explains ex-Google employee Tristan Harris as one of the impressive dramatic sequences sees a pouting preteen pose for selfies overlaid with filters that distort her features until she looks like a cartoon character. Graphs showing spiralling teen suicide rates sit next to a teary-eyed speech from Facebook’s ex “VP of Growth” warning students that the constant desire for likes he’s created “leaves you more vacant and empty”.

AI and the algorithms behind social media are also flagged as a terrifying potential destroyer of social cohesion. Their unpredictability sees a former operations manager of Facebook lament that “they’re controlling us more than we’re controlling them,” meaning it’s very difficult for social media companies to stop them spreading fake news – and thus eroding the concept of truth. 

The rise of the Flat Earth movement ? It’s all thanks to a Youtube algorithm that recommended the conspiracy videos to viewers hundreds of millions of times. Pizzagate ? Went overground when Facebook’s algorithm promoted their groups to users it had identified as being susceptible to conspiracy theories – leading to a man turning up at a restaurant with a machine-gun to liberate non-existent child hostages from a fictional basement. “It’s easy to think that it’s just a few stupid people who get convinced,” warns the engineer who created the rogue Youtube algorithm, “but the algorithm is getting smarter and smarter every day. Today they’re convincing people that the Earth is flat, but tomorrow they will be convincing you of something.”

We might live in a post-Cambridge Analytica world. But despite it being public knowledge that Vote Leave and Trump’s 2016 election campaign harvested voters’ Facebook data on a gigantic scale, The Social Dilemma still manages to find fresh and vital tales of how these platforms destabilise modern politics. A Harvard Business School professor dismisses the idea that we can avoid their political influence by revealing Facebook’s “massive scale contagion experiments” which made users vote in the US midterm elections – without them even realising they’d been motivated to do so. Russia’s Facebook hack to influence the 2016 US election? “The Russians didn’t hack Facebook. They used the tools that Facebook made for legitimate advertisers,” laments one of the company’s ex-investors. Harris explains that there is now a market where “state actors” pay to destabilise democracies across the world. According to this documentary, social media now represents an existential threat to the survival of nations.  

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But the thing that makes this documentary so utterly important is that it offers the rarest commodity in current times: hope. Regulation is a must, it argues, with its website, thesocialdilemma.com, offering resources for parents, actions to help combat disinformation and ways to sign up to Harris’s Centre for Humane Technology which aims to change the culture in the tech industry as well as encouraging politicians to legislate. “We can demand that those products be designed humanely,” says Harris. “We built these things and we have a responsibility to change them.” Absolutely. The first step is watching this phenomenal documentary – and encouraging others to do so.

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Netflix doc ‘The Social Dilemma’ is making people terrified of social media

"It made me want to punt my phone out the window"

Netflix documentary  The Social Dilemma is making people terrified of social media.

The new film from Jeff Orlowski, exploring the dangers of social networking through interviews with tech experts, has sparked an uproar on Twitter.

READ MORE: New on Netflix UK: September 2020’s must-watch film and TV

“Watched The Social Dilemma last night,” one user on Twitter began. “Made me want to punt my phone out the window! Conclusion I reached. 1 If billionaires were banned we wouldn’t be in this situation. 2social Media is actually the biggest threat. Ironically I’m on here saying it. Less SM for me!”

Watched the Social Dilemma last night. Made me want to punt my phone out the window! Conclusion I reached. 1 If billionaires were banned we wouldn’t be in this situation. 2social Media is actually the biggest threat. Ironically I’m on here saying it 😐 Less SM for me! — VillanelleApparently (@lidlbigthings) September 10, 2020

Discussing the messages of the film, former Twitter executive Jeff Seibert said: “What I want people to know is that every single action you take [online] is carefully monitored and recorded.

“Exactly what image you stop and look at, for how long you look at it.”

Another person said: “The social dilemma on Netflix is haunting. It doesn’t shy away from the truth. ‘You are the product’ is too simplistic, ‘It’s the gradual change in your behaviour and perception that is the product.’ @netflix Cancelling my Netflix subscription right now too. #TheSocialDilemma”

The social dilemma on Netflix is haunting. It doesn't shy away from the truth. "You are the product" is too simplistic, "It's the gradual change in your behaviour and perception that is the product." @netflix Canceling my Netflix subscription right now too. #TheSocialDilemma — Shivam (@shivamkimothi) September 10, 2020

Recommended

Many noted the irony of praising the film on social media, while also promising to step away from networking platforms as a result.

“Its ironic that I am going to be urging the citizens of the internet to go watch The Social Dilemma on the internet,” one wrote. “But this could well be a watershed moment in Big Tech. There are innumerable quotes from really talented folks but this stuck.”

The quote attached read: “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”

Its ironic that I am going to be urging the citizens of the internet to go watch "The Social Dilemma" on the internet. But this could well be a watershed moment in Big Tech. #TheSocialDilemma There are innumerable quotes from really talented folks but this stuck – pic.twitter.com/aalyhE0w6h — Akshay Gupta (@akshyg1008) September 9, 2020

My favourite Black Mirror episode: The social dilemma — Devansh (@Devansh78612868) September 9, 2020

The Social Dilemma is streaming on Netflix now.

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Netflix’s ‘The Social Dilemma’ Is Totally Freaking People Out—Here’s Why It’s a Must-Watch for Parents

Netflix 's The Social Dilemma has officially convinced us that we're living in the Matrix—okay, not really, but it has seriously got us thinking.

In the new documentary, a group of tech experts come together to discuss surveillance capitalism, the science behind technology addiction and the harmful effects of social media (especially among children). Essentially, per the film, what started as a harmless way to stay connected with friends has turned into a dangerous tool of manipulation, and most users aren't even aware of it.

Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, explains, "Social media isn't a tool that's just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them." Whoa .

Below, see three reasons why this Netflix film is a must-watch for parents .

1. It Clearly Breaks Down How The Internet Can Harm Children's Mental Health

You might want to think twice before you let your kids bring their phones to the dinner table. According to the documentary, because of social media, self-harming has trippled and suicide rates have risen by 150 percent among children.

Harris said, "These technology products were not designed by child psychologists who are trying to protect and nurture children. They were just designed to make these algorithms that were really good at recommending the next video to you or really good at getting you to take a photo with a filter on it."

He continues, "It's not just that it's controlling where they spend their attention. Social media starts to dig deeper and deeper down into the brain stem and take over kids' sense of self-worth and identity."

2. It Explains Why Your Kids' Online Activity Is Never Private

If there's one thing you'll learn from the experts in this film, it's that data privacy doesn't exist for anyone. Google searches, social media interactions and even scrolling patterns are tracked and used to manipulate consumers.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former VP of growth at Facebook, says in the doc, "Companies like Facebook and Google would roll out lots of little, tiny experiments that they were constantly doing on users. And over time, by running these constant experiments, you develop the most optimal way to get users to do what you want them to do. It’s manipulation." Talk about disturbing.

3. It Reveals How These Social Platforms Were Built To Keep Kids Addicted

It legit sounds like a Black Mirror plot, but experts in the film reveal that these social platforms not only try to keep more people engaged, but also, they try to get users to share more personal information online—and that's definitely not ideal if you want to protect your child's privacy.

Harris says, "They're competing for your attention. So, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, companies like this, their business model is to keep people engaged on the screen."

Tim Kendall, former president of Pinterest, adds, "Let's figure out how to get as much of this person's attention as we possibly can. How much time can we get you to spend? How much of your life can we get you to give to us?" It's certainly a lot to think about.

To stream the entire documentary, you can view it exclusively on Netflix .

Parenting Debate: Should You Put Photos of Your Kids on Social Media?

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‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix Will Convince You To Finally Delete Facebook

Where to stream:.

• The Social Dilemma
• documentaries

Everything We Know About The Will Ferrell Documentary On Netflix: 'Will & Harper' Release Date, Trailer And More

Stream it or skip it: ‘apollo 13: survival’ on netflix, a documentary rich with archival footage and terrifying suspense, brooke shields' daughter first learned of her mother's sexual assault while watching 'pretty baby' doc: "i couldn't even get through it".

While watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix, a new documentary about the potentially devastating impact of social media on the world, I tried very hard not to check my phone. Yet even as I listened to Tristan Harris, president and a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and a former Google employee, talk about the dangers of social media addiction, my fingers itched to refresh my Instagram feed. That’s not, this documentary argues, entirely a personal failing on my part. It’s because Instagram, and the many social media apps like it, have been designed to get users to give their service as much as our lives as we can possibly give. And, once we’ve given that to them, they use that information to predict and change our behavior.

You’ve probably heard that line before, particularly if you made an attempt to understand the Cambridge Analytica data hacking scandal that plagued Facebook in 2018.  The Social Dilemma— which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and was acquired by Netflix shortly after—doesn’t exactly reveal any shocking new information, but it does contextualize it in a way that may scare you. The basic gist: If you thought you were safe from manipulation via Silicon Valley—if you were too smart, too technologically savvy, or too strong-willed for that—you thought wrong. No one is safe, not even the former Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest executives who go on record in this film to say how messed up they think this whole thing is.

Director Jeff Orlowski (known for his environmental documentaries, Chasing Coral and Chasing Ice ) has scored a lot of candid interviews, with the main narrative led by Harris, who’s made something of a career of speaking out about the tech industry’s immoral ways. These interviews are as fascinating as they are horrifying.

“What I want people to know is that every single action you take [online] is carefully monitored and recorded,” says Jeff Seibert, a former executive at Twitter. “Exactly what image you stop and look at, for how long you look at it.”

Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist who is considered one of the founders of virtual reality tech, thinks the age-old adage that “we are the product” when it comes to social media is “too simplistic. It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product. … That’s the only thing that there is to make money from—changing what you do, how you think, who you are. It’s a gradual change, it’s slight. If you can go to somebody and say, ‘Give me $10 million and I will change the world 1 percent in the direction you want it to change…’ it’s the world! That’s worth a lot of money.”

“The way to think about it is 2.7 billion Truman Shows,” says early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, of the way Facebook caters a feed to each individual user. “Each person has their own reality with their own facts. Over time, you have the false sense that everyone agrees with you because everyone in your news feed sounds just like you. And once you’re in that state, it turns out you’re very easily manipulated.”

What’s slightly less fascinating is the dramatization featuring Santa Clarita Diet actor Skyler Gisondo as a Facebook-addicted teen, and Mad Men star Vincent Kartheiser as the personification of the evil algorithm that keeps him addicted. While it’s obviously supposed to keep audiences engaged between sometimes-boring interviews with executives, it comes off as simply silly, not to mention outdated, considering most teens no longer use Facebook. The melodrama of those scenes makes me wonder if The Social Dilemma will be mocked in 50 years’ time, á la the 1936 anti-marijuana documentary Reefer Madness that became a musical spoof in 1998 starring Alan Cumming and Kristen Bell.

It’s also a little weird to be watching this searing indictment of the tech industry on Netflix, one of the biggest tech giants of them all. Did Netflix not take all of the manipulative and addiction-forming strategies of these social media apps and apply them to the film industry? I mean, autoplay? The algorithm? The fact that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once said his company’s greatest competition was sleep? While YouTube does come up in regards to conspiracy theory rabbit holes, the subject of streaming is otherwise never mentioned—perhaps unsurprising, given Orlowski’s previous relationship with Netflix, which released his film Chasing Coral.

But mostly, The Social Dilemma is all too convincing in its message that Silicon Valley has been handed an unprecedented level of power thanks to technological advances, and that it’s not handling that power in an even remotely ethical way. You may come away from The Social Dilemma convinced to delete your Facebook account. But even if you do, the damage has been done. And at this point, is unclear if the tech industry—even if it woke up with a conscious, or was forced to have one in the form of government regulation—has the power to fix it.

Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix

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The Social Experiment

The Social Experiment" is about a group of young people who are lured into a supposed "Escape Room" adventure by a competition. In fact, however, it is a behavioral analysis experiment. The ... Read all The Social Experiment" is about a group of young people who are lured into a supposed "Escape Room" adventure by a competition. In fact, however, it is a behavioral analysis experiment. The experiment is conducted by two scientists. In order to be able to tailor the games exactly... Read all The Social Experiment" is about a group of young people who are lured into a supposed "Escape Room" adventure by a competition. In fact, however, it is a behavioral analysis experiment. The experiment is conducted by two scientists. In order to be able to tailor the games exactly to the strengths, weaknesses and characteristics of the participants, they have programme... Read all

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Netflix is getting two very different documentaries soon and I've already cried after watching one of the trailers

Will Ferrell's emotional new documentary had me tearing up in minutes

Netflix is adding two new documentaries to its content library at the end of the month that tackle very different subjects. So if you can't get enough factual content, or you're looking for something to watch after devouring our list of the best Netflix documentaries , you won't want to miss these.

One is a heartwarming feature where comedian and actor Will Ferrell goes on a road trip with his friend, who has recently transitioned to live as a trans woman, called Will & Harper . The other focuses on the former CEO of WWE, Vince McMahon, chronicling the rise and fall of the controversial figure across six episodes in Mr. McMahon .

There's plenty to learn about thanks to these two new documentaries. Here's what you need to know about both the new documentaries arriving on the best streaming service .

Will & Harper

Release date: September 27

Directed by Josh Greenbaum, this emotional documentary explores the friendship between Will Ferrell and former Saturday Night Live head writer Harper Steele. When Will gets an email from his long-time friend, where she comes out as a trans woman, the two head off on a road trip to reconnect, and learn more about Harper's identity and experience transitioning later in life and in the United States, something she has complex feelings about. She says in the trailer: "I love this country so much, I just don't know if it loves me back right now." You'll definitely need tissues for this one, I've already cried!

Mr. McMahon

Release date: September 25

Elsewhere, Tiger King filmmaker Chris Smith told Tudum that he's "pulled back the curtain to reveal the true Vince McMahon obscured beneath the persona he presented to the world" in this docuseries. Across the six-part series, there are more than 200 hours of interviews with McMahon himself (prior to his resignation), as well as his family members, business associates, and some of the most iconic names in wrestling history, alongside the journalists who uncovered McMahon's allegations. While this will no doubt be a tough watch, it feels like an important one.

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Lucy is a long-time movie and television lover who is an approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes. She has written several reviews in her time, starting with a small self-ran blog called Lucy Goes to Hollywood before moving onto bigger websites such as What's on TV and What to Watch, with TechRadar being her most recent venture. Her interests primarily lie within horror and thriller, loving nothing more than a chilling story that keeps her thinking moments after the credits have rolled. Many of these creepy tales can be found on the streaming services she covers regularly.

When she’s not scaring herself half to death with the various shows and movies she watches, she likes to unwind by playing video games on Easy Mode and has no shame in admitting she’s terrible at them. She also quotes The Simpsons religiously and has a Blinky the Fish tattoo, solidifying her position as a complete nerd. 

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