My Review on the Social Dilemma

This past week in class we watched a movie on Netflix called the Social Dilemma. This movie illustrated how dangerous our addiction to technology and social media is. One scene that really stood out to me was when the mother in the movie told her family that they should all put their smartphones in a locked box for one hour while they ate dinner. Halfway through dinner, the daughter took a hammer and shattered the lockbox because she couldn’t bear to be without her phone. To be honest, that’s extremely pathetic that she couldn’t go without her phone for one hour to talk to her family at dinner. This movie also emphasized that we are “the product” the Big Tech companies are selling. Social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and so many more collect our data to find out what we enjoy engaging with and sell that information to advertising companies, so they can better tailor ads to us. This is not limited to social media companies, Google and even Netflix are guilty of the same thing.

My opinion on this movie is that we are all guilty of spending too much time on our phones, but the younger generations that have grown up with phones and iPads just don’t know how to go without them. I’m probably addicted as well, the longest I’ve gone without my phone is 24 hours. I usually will leave my phone alone for hours at a time if I’m busy doing something like hanging out with family and friends. It’s also slightly concerning that our usage data is being sold to advertising companies. I was aware of this to an extent because I usually see ads tailored to me, but I wasn’t aware of the extent to which it was happening. I think it’s an invasion of privacy for all of our data to be sold.

Another scary fact I learned from watching this movie was that in the general US population of girls aged 10-14, the suicide rate has gone up by 150% since that age group started using smartphones and social media. It’s so sad that young girls are basing their self-worth and identity off likes and comments on posts. Cyber bullying is also a huge problem on social media because people are braver behind phone screens. I personally think that it’s a good idea to wait until kids are in at least eighth grade to give them a smartphone and access to social media.

In conclusion, the Social Dilemma did a good job of emphasizing the dangers of social media and phone addiction. By getting prior employees of Big Tech companies to testify about their experiences, that solidified the argument of the movie. However, the one thing that the movie didn’t do well was explain the other side of the argument, how social media has benefited our society. If they had explained that and backed up their argument again, it would’ve made the movie more credible.