The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama film directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis. The documentary covers the negative social effects of social media and is interspersed by a dramatized narrative surrounding a family of five who are increasingly affected by problematic social media use.
The Social Dilemma premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, on January 26, 2020, and was released on Netflix on September 9, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. It received generally favorable reviews from critics, who praised its message and use of interviews with established tech experts but criticized the narrative, reenactments, and lack of nuance in addressing technological problems.
Synopsis
The Social Dilemma examines the impact of social media and technology platforms on users, focusing on persuasive design, data collection, and algorithmic prediction. The film argues that companies track and analyze users' online activity in order to build artificial intelligence systems that predict and influence behavior. In the documentary, Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, says that tech companies pursue three primary goals:
Harris summed this up with the warning: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product", paraphrasing earlier insights from Television Delivers People, Tom Johnson, and Andrew Lewis.[1]