University of the East

RAMON MAGSAYSAY MEMORIAL MEDICAL

CENTER INC
#64 Aurora Blvd., Barangay Dona Imelda Quezon
City

COLLEGE OF NURSING
NCM 110 – Nursing Informatics

Name: Jabian, Patricia Jeanne M. Date: April 26, 2021

Section: N1D
The Social Dilemma

The Social Dilemma is a drama-documentary hybrid that talks about the horrors of social
media. In the said documentary there are a lot of tech experts from different tech companies like
Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. telling the horrors of their own technological
creations. The drama-documentary is mainly focused on a teenager named Ben, as the experts explain
the horrors and dangers of social media, Ben falls further and further where he became a victim of
fake news, click baits, and propaganda, Ben even found himself in a protest rally in the wrong side of
the issue. It also showed how social media can affect the mental well-being portrayed by Ben’s sister
after seeing someone leaves a negative comment on one of her selfies. The expert, Tristan Harris said
that there are 3 main goals of how social media earns money, first is what they call “engagement” to
keep their users to scroll, second is “growth” to make you come back, and lastly “advertising” as it
happens for them to make money and this is made possible by the algorithms to keep the numbers
from growing. It was also said that these companies are only tricking us to think that their products are
free, but, if you don’t pay for a product, then you are the product.

This documentary is somehow and eye opener for me because as I watch this, I looked at my
phone’s screen time and it reads approximately 8 hours of screen time in a day. I was scared and
bothered on the fact that I spend almost half of my day using social media and the pandemic only
made it worse, the lack of physical contact took a toll on us. In addition, the documentary talked about
how social media manipulates us through our own psychology and using persuasive technology to
draw us in to our phones. Photo tagging and the notifications are on of their strategies to persuade our
system to check our phones from time to time, they only want us to look at ads for them to make
money. Social media is a drug, said of the experts. There is also a quote flashed on the screen saying,
“There are only two industries that call their customers “users”: illegal drugs and software.” it is
alarming that these industries are dehumanizing us, as pre-teens and teenagers struggle to achieve a
certain standard for social approval. It scared me when the statistics for self-harm and suicide through
the years are gradually spiking up, depression and insecurity all because of social media. Social media
is becoming really problematic, it is not going in a good direction and it need to change, we need to
change.