Two days ago, my paternal uncle who turned 75 in April, called me early in the morning. He sounded worried, and asked me why I had not “liked” his recent photograph on Facebook. “I spent a lot of time digging it from my archives. You should like it and comment on it to show your support,” he said. Before I could say anything, his brother, who turns 74 this October, snatched the phone from him to lodge a similar complaint. “Why have you not retweeted my latest tweet?” he asked.
Late in my teens, when broadband internet became virtually ubiquitous, my friends and I discovered the hitherto hidden world of social media. What started with instant messaging applications like Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger soon became an obsession with websites like Orkut and then Facebook, where we could write on each other’s “walls,” share photographs from parties, and even “tag” each other. It was all hunky-dory in the beginning, before I realized how much time I spent just waiting for people to like my photographs.
Instead of studying for my exams, I was burning the midnight oil, waiting for popularity on social media.
So when my septuagenarian uncles chided me for not liking and commenting on Facebook and Twitter posts, I could not help but smile at their innocence. But then I watched Netflix’s new documentary, aptly titled The Social Dilemma, and could not help but feel scared for my two uncles, who had retired as eminent professors from India’s top institutes.
Lessons from the documentary
The Social Dilemma is the latest directorial venture by Jeff Orlowski, who previously directed Emmy-award winning documentary Changing Ice about climate change. A host of former employees from tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and top academicians from Harvard and Stanford Universities take turns in The Social Dilemma to explain how social media apps have taken control of our lives and control us more than we realize.
Weaving a story of a young boy from a typical American family that is easy to connect with, The Social Dilemma uses simple examples to show us how dependent humans have become on social media and the external validation it rewards us with. Today, we live in a connected world where “likes,” and “retweets” give us more happiness than human company.
Anatomy of an app
The Social Dilemma has a simple message -- if we are not paying for a product, then we, humans, are the products. But what does that mean?
Almost every application today is aimed at making money. When users start using an application on their phones, they discover new features that provide them some utility, such as reconnecting with old friends, or stumbling across a picture from a relative’s wedding.
As more users get hooked to the app, the app gets a large database that comprises of user information. This information could range from personal information like age, birthday, and address, to information about user activity, like spending habits and buying preferences. This might not always be bad. Google Maps, for instance, uses data from users’ phones to predict traffic and suggest alternate routes.
Like most apps, social media apps are concerned with three parameters:
1) Engagement, that is, the time spent by users on the app. This could be in the form of sending messages to people or browsing through photographs and videos that the app recommends
2) Growth, that is, increasing the user base. This is why some apps give us referral bonuses
3) Monetization; it is business, after all
For an app to be successful, all the three parameters need to align and follow each other, creating a cycle. If users spend more time on the app, then there is an impetus for their friends and family to join them because that is where all the action is -- family conversations, photographs from the latest wedding, etc.
And when users start spending more time on the app and interacting with more people, that is when apps strike gold -- the data that is thus generated by users is used to create an advertisement platform. And users are shown ads by the highest “bidder.”
In other words, users end up becoming a product for app developers and advertisers. Social media loses its sheen over time though. And to bring back users, apps send out frequent notifications, informing us about a new message, or a friend’s birthday.
So what next?
It is hard to decouple social media from our lives today. We are connected to old friends and distant relatives through social media. And this is precisely the dilemma that the documentary talks about.
But it is hard to overlook all the times when social media has been used to manipulate users’ opinions or spread misinformation -- the 2016 US elections and multiple instances of riots and violence due to fake news being some cases in point that The Social Dilemma discusses. Social media has also led to a rise in anxiety and depression.
A 2015 study by the University of Missouri found that regular usage of Facebook could lead to symptoms of depression. With the world more isolated than ever before because of Covid-19, the situation becomes very worrisome.
Quitting social media altogether might not be the solution. The need of the hour is responsible usage. We must question every piece of news we see on social media.
Simple steps like muting notifications that are not urgent could go a long way in reducing the urge to check every notification the moment we receive it, thereby reducing our dependence on social media.
We also need to ask questions on the ethics of social media -- if users are the ones who help apps make money, then should we not be compensated for it?
The Social Dilemma poses a lot of questions, the answers to which it does not necessarily have. The documentary leaves us thinking about social media and its responsible usage. Hopefully, social media does not end up controlling us all.
Rishabh Kochhar is a freelance contributor.