The Social Dilemma: Behind The Sophistication of Technology

The Social Dilemma is a netflix documentary about some tech experts from big tech companies are interviewed and giving a warn of social media dangerous impacts. Working in technology industry, the experts realize that social media has became a problem.

The experts explained how the technology business model are designed to keep us engaged with them without realizing that it’s slowly wrecking our life.

This is very dilemmatic since social media is really helpful these days. They provides us some informations and makes our life way more easier. But there’s another side where social media is can really harmful. They can spark conflicts through news, they can change our behavior, etc. The worst of all is we are not aware that we have been “manipulated”.

It’s amazed but also terrified me that tech industries have became a successful virtual marketplace. Honestly, their business strategy is brilliant but they unintendedly have led us into a blackhole. We can’t stop using our devices.

“This is what every business has always dreamt of: to have a guarantee that if it places an ad, it will be successful. That’s their business. They sell certainty. In order to be successful in that business, you have to have great predictions. Great predictions begin with one imperative: you need a lot of data.”

One of the quotes that I highlighted from the documentary shows how their business model works. So It is said that the tech industries collected users data by tracking and measuring our online activities. Once they got our information, they can predict which contents that suits our preferences and they served the contents and placed an ad there. Voila. They have successfully kept us engaged and at the same time they are profiting.

One thing that we can’t deny from this phenomenon is we can’t get away from our devices. We kept using them even when we gather with our family and when we attend a class. Well, I can’t disagree with that. Such a sad truth that technology has taken our attention away from our real world and made us spend more time online.

It says that our generations are conditioned that when we are uncomfortable or lonely we can go to our digital devices to find something that can entertain us. Well at this time we are also facing an ongoing issues where people became insecure after spending too much time in social media. We started to compare our life with others, and we see ourselves as not as happy as others. Instead of being entertained, we actually feel exhausted. Well, not everyone feel this way, but what I am going to say is social media is not an escape from our problems. It’s not the only thing that can comfort us.

This documentary is really mindblowing. Like have we ever thought that the tech industry designed those digital platforms and they were not intended to create a problem but it actually became a problem now. I think it’s a good documentary to watch so that we can explore what is happening behind the sophistication of technology and it can educate us so we can use our social media more wisely.