Director: Jeff Orlowski 

Verdict: An ominous, dystopic docudrama film that that is sufficiently detailed about the ills of social media, but oversimplistic about problems of the world today. 

The Social Dilemma explains how technology, and algorithms run the world today. By unpacking attention economy, it breaks down the complex question: what is the product in the world of free social media?. It brings ex-employees of big companies, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – to explain how human addiction has been intentionally exploited by social media platforms. Interviews of tech activists, are shown to explain the ways in which people can protect their attention, time and children’s mental health. This is a solid analysis of the complex problem of social media addiction today.  

The drama part of the film, shows an average American family struggling with social media addiction. It shows how the self-esteem of teenagers in the family are ruined by social media use. It is a chilling, dystopic representation of every-day lives we all live – fighting a daily social media addiction at our family dinner tables, at school, while driving. The film takes a radical stand and dramatizes the machines producing algorithms, into human avatars, controlling the mind of a teenager through social media feeds, and advertisements. The message is clear: we are being controlled, our attention is no more ours, we are addicted and our children are suffering. 

The film’s take that it is algorithms that cause political turmoil, civil wars, election mess, and all the problems of the world, is a tad bit oversimplistic. As one interviewer says in the film, “Technology has the ability to bring the worst in society”.The film makes the case that the way algorithms are designed, platforms are used by political leaders to spread hate speech, by groups to incite mob violence and by people to spread fake news. While it is true that rise of technology has the played a role in the extremely polarized world in which we live in today; we need to ask ourselves if technology is the villain or the tool of the villain?

The Social Dilemma puts out a strong warning: algorithms today are so powerful and we should be scared. We need protection from them. We need regulation in their production and how our data is used by companies. There has been an unprecedent growth  of technology in the last two decades and the world has not been able to move at the same speed of machines. It is scary to hear from ex-employees of big tech giants that – the very people who put the addiction in social media – today find themselves helpless at its expense. It all sounds very fair  – the amount of data with tech giants, puts them at an unfair advantage to influence the world, and that surely needs to be regulated.

Overall, The Social Dilemma is informative, important and well researched. It does a brilliant job explaining the new product in the digital world, No it is not your data. It is your behaviour. Insane, right? Advertisers use social media to influence your behaviour, sometimes it is to buy ice cream and other times it is to kill Rohingya Muslims. But you still choose which side you’d like to be influenced, because algorithms just work that way. 

3 thoughts on “The Social Dilemma (2020) – right plot, wrong villain”
  1. I had heard about this documentary a lot and after reading your review i am surely going to watch it. Superb writing as usual Chhavi!
    Keep writing and helping us out!

  2. Excellent review, Suman! Please congratulate your daughter. She is so very right! Technology is governed by human behaviour too. Of course, George Orwell’s Big Brother has arrived and technology is aiding that. The perils of fb were known but everyone is on it despite that. All photos, destinations in real-time, interest groups, moody jottings what have you. I guess it’s a double-edged sword!!
    message by my dear friend Aditi Kapur.
    thanks a lot dear

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