Pascual, Xyrha Paolyn N.

11 - Our Lady of Lourdes

The Social Dilemma

The Social Dilemma was released on September 9, 2020. It is a docudrama wherein they tackled
the problems of using social media today. The documentary examines how social media's design
nurtures addiction to maximize profit, and its ability to manipulate people's views, emotions, and
behavior and spread conspiracy theories and disinformation. Therefore, the Tech experts from
Silicon Valley sound the alarm about the dangers of social media to our society.

The movie started with the respondents introducing themselves. Some are significant investors in
social media applications, and some are former workers in social media. The interviewer started
by asking the respondents, “What is the main issue with the use of social media?”. In a video
clip, the reporter sheds light on a study linked between mental health and social media. 97% of
teenagers use social media platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and many more.
According to this movie, it seems that a lot of teens can isolate themselves and not interact with
other people. And a lot of them are depressed by the use of social media platforms. This movie
made me realize that by browsing through some social media platforms, you will see a lot of
depressed teens trying to reach help online. Many teenagers are addicted to social media. And if
you ask a teen to delete their social media, they cannot because they are addicted. A lot of people
seek validation online. That is why this movie’s purpose is to stop oversharing because the
platforms know everything about the users. Moving on, in the movie, they tackled that social
media is a perfect place to spread misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. One
respondent told the interviewer that social media platforms steal data from you. Everything you
do is being watched, tracked, and measured. It is scary to know that everything you search is
being monitored and recorded.

This movie is very informative on how social media platforms can be dangerous places to be. To
gathering data, being monitored on everything you do. Although, those platforms can be useful
by the means of reaching out to your friends and family that are far away from you, and being
alarmed by the current issues or news in the world. With the good sides of social media, it is no
match for the dangerous sides of it. So, we should use social media properly and we should be
responsible for everything we do with this.