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Utopia netflix12/11/2023 Having first-hand experience of these effects and with the topic of mental health being extremely important to me, I personally wish that the film had spent more than approximately five to seven minutes on this aspect. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business presents startling and shocking statistics regarding how cases of depression and anxiety, self harm, and suicide, in girls and young women specifically, have skyrocketed since the onset of social media in the late 2000s. Just as the big tech executives are not equipped to protect its users, the human brain is also not equipped to handle the constant cycle of social approval that is created and reinforced by the likes, comments, and reactions that curate a facade of perfection on social media. While I personally believe that social media has measurable effects on users of all ages, The Social Dilemma focuses mostly on its effects on tweens and teens - emphasizing that the creators of these platforms are not child psychologists and are therefore not equipped with the knowledge necessary or even the goal of protecting children from the more insidious effects of social media. The next portion of the film focuses on the effects of social media on mental health. On a much deeper level, our deepest emotions and behaviors that may even be unrecognized by ourselves are monitored and dissected to create profit for advertisers. It is not as simple as our online purchasing history being used to predict what we will purchase next. Through this lens, the conventional way with which we understand and sometimes scoff at the idea of our data being stolen is challenged. In this way, we advertisers, not individuals are the customers, and we the people are the product. How? Because advertisers are the ones paying for the product. What is often overlooked, and what is astutely pointed out by Aza Raskin, a former employee of Firefox & Mozilla Labs and the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, is that while we as individuals do not pay to use social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, those companies are still being monetized. ![]() However, where The Social Dilemma succeeds is in framing the business models of big tech as a matter of principle and as the newest iteration of a broken capitalist system that values corporations over individuals. I was always of the mindset that since I was not doing anything wrong, dangerous, or illegal online, I didn’t really care if some tech CEO across the country knew how many cat videos I watched on Youtube or how often I searched for sad songs on Spotify. To be frank, I have personally always been in the camp of people that really didn’t care if my data was being stolen or if my online behaviors were being monitored. The film begins with the topic that is most commonly brought up when discussing the pitfalls of social media - our data how it’s used, how it’s sold, and how it’s manipulated. In framing social media platforms as online marketplaces of human product The Social Dilemma has for the first time given me, as a media consumer and a media student, cause for concern over the way my data, and in a sense my very self, is nothing more than a means to a profitable end. With credit to the filmmakers as well and the interviewees, The Social Dilemma really excels in making relatively difficult technical practices and nuanced business models easily understandable and dissectible for the average viewer while retaining the importance and urgency of the content. From the mouths of those that created some of the most influential platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, we learn not only how the social media landscape has been intentionally created to influence and manipulate its users, but also how the unforeseen consequences of an ever-connected world have led to deteriorations in mental health and threats to modern democracy. ![]() Directed by Jeff Orlowski, The Social Dilemma combines interviews with ex-Silicon Valley executives with archival news footage, interspersed with a dramatized narrative storyline that follows an American family grappling with their own social media usage. It also takes a close look at the tech giants that designed these platforms to be as effective and profitable as possible. Netflix’s new docudrama, The Social Dilemma, holds a mirror up to a society shaped and changed by social media.
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