Netflix’s urgent documentary “The Social Dilemma” addresses the serious side effects of online social interaction.
By focusing on social media, an integral form of communication, especially during quarantine as of recent, director Jeff Orlowski is able to discuss the inner workings of the online industry without condescension. What results from the multitude of experienced interviewees is an insightful exploration of the relationship between people and their social media account.
While social media was initially created to make connecting with other people more accessible, the concept has become an integral part of society. Due to this popularity, advertising has become internalized within these sites’ infrastructures.
Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma” investigates the ways sites specialize advertising for each user. Essentially, each of these sites rely on the personal data uploaded onto their server by users.
Winthrop University marketing professor Hemant Patwardhan shared his knowledge about the topic. “Whatever you put up online to create an account, I would say a website, or with a business, or a social media account, all the activity that you engage in over the internet in terms of maybe browsing history, or buying products, or saying something to friends or relatives, all that is your own personal data. The website would normally use that information to offer you some goods and services based on your likes and dislikes and your past purchase history.”
Through the marketing of their users’ interests, Tristan Harris, the president of the Center for Humane Technology who “The Social Dilemma” referred to as being “the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience,” simplifies this dynamic.
“If you are not paying for the product, you are the product,” Harris said.
The information that social media websites use to define their users to others is simultaneously being appropriated for marketing and advertising. The circulation of personal data on social media also plays a hand in the distribution of fake news. Based on the political leanings of an account, certain articles produced by less than reliable news sources can be recommended. With a clickbait title or thumbnail, the article can gain traction and eventually be interwoven with reality.
“When the same news comes to you from various different times off of various different sites, you tend to believe that it is true. So, even fake news can eventually be part of the factual thing,” Patwardhan said.
As these sites obtain compensation in the form of clicks or views, the misinformation can become fake news and spread around the internet. Another interviewee from the Netflix documentary, Justin Rosenstein who is an American software programmer gave insight into the matter. “Essentially, you vote with your clicks. If you click on clickbait, you’re creating a financial incentive that perpetuates this existing system,” Rosenstein said.
Since personal information and false information can be spread so easily on social media sites, it is inevitable that they can bleed into someone’s life and mental health, particularly for younger people. Younger users on social media websites are much more susceptible to becoming addicted to their account because of their large amount of free time.
“Social media starts to dig deeper and deeper down into the brain stem and take over kids’ sense of self worth and identity,” Harris said. Once younger users become addicted to their account, their mental health becomes increasingly tied to their online reputation. Despite social interaction and validation being a key component in adolescence, the sheer amount enabled by social media is not beneficial.
“But were we evolved to be aware of what 10,000 people think of us? We were not evolved to have social approval being dosed to us every five minutes,” Harris said. Humans are an inherently social species, but the overwhelming rate of interaction at which social media promotes is wildly outside a human’s genetic makeup, no matter their age.
However, this level of addiction is not strictly exemplified by younger users. “The Social Dilemma” aims to present the widespread effects of social media as a universal problem. The credits of the film themselves present this direction, with the title glitching into “Our Social Dilemma.”
For humanity’s intense relationship with social networking to halt, people must realize that this problem originates from a human-made program, and so, other humans are the only source to control it.
Photo by Gabrielle Reid
