“The Social Dilemma” exposes an important problem. The solution is amongst all of us.
Alongside The Great Hack, The Social Dilemma is a timely documentary to watch right now. We need to continue to drive awareness of the consequences that Big Tech companies have brought to our societies, our cultures and to us, as people. It may be scary, but ignorance of us — “the users” — is what led to this situation in the first place.
“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product” is a true testament of that.
The key argument of the film revolves around exploitive and addictive nature of social media that leaves human society with ruined mental heath, compromised democracies and divided communities. The story is told by the very people who helped create social media platforms in the first place.
This film is insightful, informative and entertaining to watch — as serious as the subject is, it’s done in an engaging format with good editing that captivating. I admire the work of the director Jeff Orlowski and everyone involved to pull this documentary together.
Personally, for me it lacked on few points:
- It’s one-sided. There are no representatives to critique the main argument.
- The prospect of the “way out” or future solutions are not clearly presented. Only from this article I learnt about the director’s optimism for developing human-first technology.
- When framing the problem, it doesn’t mention, not once, the influence of smartphone technology and smartphone proliferation within our society. Let’s be honest — if we were all still on blackberries, chances are the social media companies wouldn’t have had the power they do now.
It made me think..
What’s next? How do we get out of this?
Social media is not going to disappear and neither will smartphones. The pandora box has been opened and there is no way to undo the progress and reverse this technological advance. It would go against the natural rules of technical innovation.
I believe that what we need is to learn how to manage our behaviour with social media and our phones and create a healthy discipline, same as we do with our physical and mental wellbeing, in order to live a healthy lifestyle. Think of it this way, if you struggle with your weight because you eat fast food every day, would shutting down the fast food companies be a solution to this problem? No. To drive a positive change, you should start with yourself.
Here are some suggestions:
Social media:
- Turn off social media notifications for good. I’d personally only keep WhatsApp notifications as for many people this has become the primary text messaging platform.
- Have a clear purpose of why you need, use and check social media. Beware of mindless scrolling and seek mindful discovery.
- Have a specific daily routine for your social media interactions — for example, once or twice a day at certain times.
- When you have an urge to check in, ask yourself, what else could I be doing right now to (pick an option): entertain, learn, distract myself? You’ll be surprised how many other useful activities are at your disposal. Create new habits to break behavioural loops.
- Read news from your trusted news sources — online, newspaper or TV. Don’t follow the rabbit hole (aka algorithm) of your social media feed which will keep you firmly in your bias’ bubble.
Smartphones:
- Keep an eye of the amount of your screen time weekly and set your healthy goals.
- Remove your phone from the table at all mealtimes. Enjoy your food and enjoy your company.
- Delete apps you don’t use. This is a “digital clutter” and no clutter is good.
- Be frugal with your notification settings and only allow Push Notifications for apps that are critical to your day to day life and work (for example, email, trusted news app, messaging etc).
- Buy a watch (this one for myself as I use my phone to check time).
Final thoughts.
I don’t believe that the social media companies are these evil engines with the purpose to destroy our minds, our society or democracies for the sake of their profit. Their original mission was to connect people, encourage sharing and learning, breaking through physical borders and enriching our knowledge about the world and others in it. Their founders wanted to create great companies and good businesses.
What we see today with the declining mental health of young people, interventions into democratic processes, spread of misinformation are all unintended outcomes of that original good mission. Rogue agents are not hacking Facebook to spread misinformation — they merely use Facebook and its products.
Similar to climate change, this is a cross cultural, multi-layered global problem. And as is the case with climate change, it won’t be solved with solely by governments’ interventions or by tech companies themselves. There has to be a holistic, all encompassing approach to this problem, that requires everyone to change their ways and everyone to action.
This includes:
Governments. An updated regulation is needed to ensure laws reflect the protection needs of a modern society, living in the era of endless information flow and constant connectivity. If you work in a government organisation, use your influence, however limited, to drive this change.
Big Tech. Developers must shift their mindsets towards ethical design and human-first approach to ensure that the products and user journey they create put the health of our minds before the profits. The tech leaders should be brave enough to review and adapt their business models for the greater good without destroying their companies. Mark Zuckerberg’s comment in the film is that “the solution for AI is a better AI” is flawed. I also believe he has more to say on the subject that the filmmakers want us to think.
Individuals. We all need to create a discipline and define a purpose for social media use and educate our children about it. The film points out that human beings weren’t designed to cope with constant social attention or social approval on this scale. As a parent of small children, this does worry me a lot. There has to be ways to educate your children and to enable them to build resilience towards social media pressures.
I believe in the power of technology to improve the way we live and work. I also believe in the power of humans to ensure this happens.
So…
Watch the film.
Have an opinion.
Be part of the solution.
About the author:
I’m a passionate technology, SaaS and Customer Success advocate. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
