Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma,” is a 90-minute documentary featuring experts who have ample experience working in the social tech industry. These experts have all come together to share a simple message: the purpose of social media has evolved, and not in a good way.
Rhetorically, the documentary contains multiple elements that make it an interesting watch. Expert opinions, animations and graphics combined with sitcom-like real-life examples of the adverse effects of social media work together to convey all the abstract concepts that tech experts bring up throughout the documentary.
Fundamentally, the idea of “The Social Dilemma” is quite simple: to remind people to put their phones down, because social media giants will not. Experts discuss the negative side effects of spending too much time on social media, including the deterioration of mental health. One even described “Snapchat dysmorphia,” a term coined to describe young adults visiting plastic surgeons to look more like Snapchat filters.
Amid this incredulity, though, “The Social Dilemma” discusses how the purpose of social media has wavered. Initially the goal was to connect individuals, keep people informed and serve as a means to meet new people. Yet modern social media platforms have evolved into something darker and more concerning.
Now, users scroll through their Instagram feeds, watching other people post bikini pictures or showing off their six-packs, envious and sad that they do not (or can not) look like that.
Users look at those around them and become sad that they do not have as many friends.
Popularity has been quantified and is constantly visible to the entire world, determined by the number of Instagram followers, Snapchat streaks and TikTok videos, all located on a screen, easily accessible.
As one reporter says in the documentary, “The tools that we have created have started to erode the social fabric of how society works.”
Experts like Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google, shifted the blame from the individual to the tech giant.
Harris claimed that the influence social media has come to have on individuals puts engineers and creators on a pedestal.