The Social Dilemma – It is Time to See Beyond

Social media is not just a platform to connect people. It is a medium through which we access information across the globe according to our interests and wishes. A newspaper contains common news for everyone, a website contains the same information for every person reading it, but our social media feeds are unique for each of us and that is what makes them special. It is through this specialty that we have been manipulated for long without even noticing what is happening to us.

Jeff Orlowski directed “The social dilemma” is a Netflix original documentary initially released on 26th January 2020. It is an account of social media experiences and how that transformed the world from a people-oriented community to an information-oriented generation. Many engineers who worked behind these technologies recorded their experiences and explained how the facilities they created manipulated them.

The documentary, along with depicting the experiences of engineers who worked behind the technologies, shows a family in parallel where two kids and their parents are addicted to their mobile phones and never spend quality time with their friends or family. One of the kids then accidentally gets caught in a protest against the government through the influence of the news he got on social media.

The documentary depicts three AI robots portrayed as humans who build the prototype of this kid and influences him with his interests and needs through his social media feed. This is how the way of digital media manipulation is shown. The documentary showcases needs to reduce the effect of social media in our lives and lead a healthy community. But it’s no easy job as we have to fight a giant tech industry and our own minds.

Tristan Harris, the American ethicist and computer scientist who is a lead actor in the documentary, describes the art of social media as the science of human persuasion. “How long can we make them look into this screen?” The answer to this question depicts the quality and profit of an application.

Tristan also speaks about people not thinking of ways to reduce the impact of the mess already generated but only to enhance it further. If there needs to be a change, not only does the industry need alterations but so do we. We have to fight our instincts to look at the phone every morning and every five minutes. We need to be courageous enough to turn off the notifications and find a hobby that doesn’t involve the blue screen.

We identified some key aspects which we think should to be taken seriously.

● If you are not paying for the product, you are the product

We never think about how the only people in the world who are getting us services for free, make money. I am talking about all the personalized experiences that we get every day for no extra cost in the form of pictures of our friends, informative news, the life of our favorite celebrity, cute puppy videos, and so on. When we are not paying for the services we get, we are the people being sold. In this case, the advertising companies pay the online media money to sell us to their products.

The end result of all this is we become addicted to wonderful options that we get but we end up thinking that we are the one deciding our social media feed or videos we watch. Now is the right time to understand that we are being controlled by social media algorithms.

● Brain capacity didn’t increase at the same rate of increased information

Knowledge is a key that can lead to both good and bad. The advancements in the technological field were so drastic that we are not seeing same facilities as 20 years ago. But human brains are not advanced enough as the services we created for ourselves, hence, we become incapable of correctly processing all the information. It is hard to determine what to believe and what not to.

● Creators were unaware of the consequences

The technologists behind the platforms clearly suggest that they never anticipated that their creation will be blissful in the future. One such amazing example is the social like button, the aim was to spread love and affection. However, it turns out to be a depressing fact for teenagers who get fewer likes or sprout up political scandals.