The documentary examines how social media’s design nurtures addiction to maximize profit and its ability to manipulate people’s views, emotions, and behavior. The film features interviews with many former employees, executives, and other professionals from top tech companies like Google and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Interviewees draw on their primary experiences at the companies they respectively worked in to discuss how such companies and platforms have caused negative social, political, and cultural consequences. Orlowski uses a cast of actors to dramatize the issues covered in the documentary. The main character, Ben, is a teenager who falls deeper into social media addiction under the manipulation of the Engagement, Growth, and Advertisement AIs.
Isla, the youngest daughter in the family, represents how teenage girls fall into depression and lose their sense of identity due to social media. Ben’s mother proposes that everyone keep their cell phones locked in a KitchenSafe prior to eating dinner but when a notification buzzes on someone’s phone, Isla gets up from the table and tries to open it. Halfway through the agreed time period, Ben becomes addicted to one video in particular. The AIs behind the screen analyze how his social media activity affects his daily life. Ben gets involved in an “Extreme Center” rally that escalates and becomes violent towards the end of the film.
The Social Dilemma examines the social and cultural impact of social media usage on regular users, with a focus on algorithmically enabled forms of behavior modification and psychological manipulation. The film depicts an array of related themes including but not limited political manipulation, technological addiction, echo chambers, fake news, depression and anxiety. One interviewee, Tim Kendall, former director of Facebook, spoke up on the alarming goal of Facebook: updating the app with increased addictiveness for a consistent boost in engagement.
Random Citizen 