Checkmate, Humanity.
By: Liani Advincula
Tags: The Social Dilemma, Social Media, Netflix Originals, Documentary

Numerous sci-fi films have warned us of how artificial intelligence (AI) would soon invade our planet and take over all mankind. For instance, films like Pacific Rim (2013), The Terminator (1984), I am Mother (2019), and even Wall-E (2008) have shown us a glimpse of what it’s like to be simultaneously living with droids and cyborgs. However, it may not have been an entirely good idea to give us a mental picture for we have lost sight of how technology has already taken over. After watching several sci-fi films (and of course, reading the books on which these films were based), we might have pictured the whole “robot invasion” differently. Most of us might have imagined it to be set 10 to 20 years from now in an extremely advanced epoch where buildings are made of steel, communication devices are holographic, and you get to casually be friends with androids. These are technically right but probably not the way we visualized it. As a matter of fact, there is no point in visualizing it because our reality has been this way since the dawn of the digital age.

We have come to a point where technology has become our digital pacifier and social media has become a hybrid of a utopian and dystopian universe. It almost gives the same feeling when something is on sale and our immediate response is to buy it. In this way, our world has somehow reversed in which we, the social media users, are the products of a capitalist world. However, the problem is not easily us becoming the products; rather, the actual product is “the gradual change in the behavior of a person”.

Photo by Chuma A on Unsplash

The term, positive intermittent reinforcement perfectly describes the way we interact with social media platforms and it’s somehow similar to how slot machines work. The commonality between casinos and tech companies is that it is not enough that consumers use the product. Instead, they want to dive right into the brain stem and build an unconscious habit. As a result, we unconsciously interact with the platforms on a deeper level. In other words, we tend to be addicted to what they offer. Hence, design techniques like Facebook’s “Like” button or YouTube’s recommendation page were built to fuel this addiction. To quote Facebook’s “head of growth”, Chamath Palihapitiya:

we want to psychologically figure out how to manipulate you as fast as possible and then give you back that dopamine hit.

We become the selling point the moment we build a habit of engaging in these digital platforms with a similar trend. Therefore, tech companies become richer for every second we spend on their social media sites. They profit from the certainty they provide by getting great predictions based on our personal data. However, the problem is not about whether or not these companies sell our information but what they do with it. Hence, “growth hacking” which is shouldered by a group of engineers, is essential in decoding the users’ psychology to get more engagements.

On the one hand, tech companies profit and gain more clients but on the other the users, including the inventors and tech designers themselves, become addicted. This, in turn, affects the users’ overall well-being. According to social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, there was an exponential increase in depression and anxiety for American teenagers between 2011 and 2013. Moreover, the rate of 15 to 19 year-olds who cut themselves and get clinically admitted increased by 62 percent while there was also a 189 percent increase for 10 to 14 year-olds. This is a similar trend with suicide associated with social media. With this in mind, it is safe to say that new generations have been trained to depend on digital pacifiers from one extreme point of their emotional well-being to another. As a result, it has affected the way they respond to life’s situations may it be good or bad.

As the Tragedian, Sophocles said, “nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”. In line with this, social media and the Internet as a whole does not only affect one’s mental well-being. In fact, digital media’s influence has been as extreme as starting wars, manipulating elections, promoting bad morals and values, spreading misinformation, and destroying democracy. However, let us not forget that each party has a role to play. If there is one important lesson I have learned in Social Dilemma, it is this — we are responsible for every choice that we make. We have stressed enough about how social media is more than just a tool. It has moved on to have specific goals that they have achieved by putting our psychology against us. Despite this, however, Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, said that the existential threat is not social media itself but the worst in society revealed by social media. In this manner, we can neither entirely blame digital media nor should we think it is impossible to redefine digital media’s purpose. With this in mind, several professionals interviewed in the documentary have suggested a few ways we can help combat the problem.

1. Collective Will Is Necessary.

The effects of social media are leaning towards a set of dystopian qualities with the present business model. Hence, we should acknowledge our responsibility as social media citizens by redesigning our social media diet to outweigh its dystopian features. We can start this off by muting our notifications. Nowadays, we wake up from the sound of a notification alarm and it shows how badly we are inclined to our digital devices. By turning off our notifications, we can discipline ourselves to physically interact with others, explore new hobbies, and rediscover ourselves. We can also practice detoxifying by refusing to watch videos listed on the recommendations page and practicing media literacy. As much as possible, we need to stray away from being peddlers of misinformation. Therefore, we need to fact-check, consider the source, and take the extra effort to search further about the information before posting it on social media. As we head into dystopia, collective will might be the best solution to fix the problem and it starts by individually taking small steps that would eventually lead to big changes.

2. Demand The Products Be Redesigned Humanely.

The fact is, we are not up against inventors and tech designers but a problematic business model. Likewise, it is okay for companies to profit but not without regulations. With the absence of regulations and lack of laws regarding digital privacy, we allow companies to act as de facto governments. Therefore, our solution should align with the companies’ financial incentives and with our right to digital privacy. With that, a simple yet impactful solution would be for us to demand the products to be redesigned humanely and not to be treated as an extractable source. Social media users are responsible for speaking up when our right to privacy is being violated. In this way, we can be one step closer to changing what social media looks like and means the moment we take on this responsibility.

3. Parents Need To Engage With Their Children.

Last but not the least, parents need to ensure that their children do not miss having genuine time with their family and with others. With this in mind, parents need to figure out the best age to allow their kids to have their own social media accounts. Most people who work for tech industries set specific ground rules with their children when it comes to social media use. For instance, they do not allow their children to have social media until the age of eighteen. Moreover, they work a time budget with their kids to limit the amount of time they spend on social media in a day. However, these might not work if the parents themselves do not become good examples of what they teach. Hence, it is probably best that the whole family practices the same discipline to motivate each other to fight the norms of social media use.