[Our] Social Dilemma: A Response To The Netflix Documentary

“Let’s get off social media for Lent this year,” she said. 

That was how it started. We were juniors in college when my roommate suggested we fast from using social media platforms for the forty days of Lent. We chose social media for a number of reasons: to refocus our attention on God, take a mental break, and witness what would happen to us without it. 

The first few days were brutal. I thought about checking Instagram constantly (which thankfully, I had deleted) and each time, I asked the Lord to help me fight the desire. I wanted to keep this promise to Him, stepping out of the virtual world to step further into His. I hoped the benefits of the fast would far outweigh the “news” I would miss (who else got engaged, who went to a concert or Taco Bell, who was sick of studying but still looking classy in the library), but I didn’t know it would change how I used social media forever. 

The Dilemma  

The crux of the new Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” hinges on this idea from Tristan Harris, former Google Design Ethicist, the most featured expert in the film: in the past, we’ve worried about when Artificial Intelligence will “overcome our strengths” and push us out of jobs, but we have failed to notice “how it has already overcome our points of weakness by fostering addiction and fueling dissent.” 

Harris notes,

“People think ‘Google’s just a search box and Facebook’s just a place to see what my friends are doing and see their photos.’ What they don’t realize is [these platforms are] competing for your attention…Social media isn’t a tool that’s just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them.”

Later, these words flicker across the screen:

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.” - Edward Tufte

Ironic, right?

“The Social Dilemma” presents several well-founded arguments, but I won’t summarize them here. In preparation for you to watch it, I want to highlight some of the film’s most significant points and bring Scripture into the conversation, so we can look at this dilemma holistically. 

The Reality

Although (in a paranoid frenzy) I deleted my Pinterest account after watching this, I am not advocating for the deletion of social media platforms and the film isn’t either. While I sometimes wish we could go back to the early 2000s of landlines and flip phones, Pandora’s Box is open. Living offline completely, for most of us, is simply unrealistic in 2020. But the realities of how these platforms are impacting society are nothing less than horrifying.

At 30:47 of the documentary, a social psychologist, Dr. Jonathan Haidt from NYU, appears on screen. With deep severity, he says, “There has been a gigantic increase in depression and anxiety for American teenagers.” A graph then materializes: between 2009 and 2015, the number of U.S. hospital admissions for teenage girls inflicting self-harm skyrocketed. For girls 15 to 19, it increased by 69%. For girls 10 to 14, it escalated 189%. “That’s nearly triple,” Haidt says.

This part of the film sent chills down my spine.

“Even more horrifying,” continues Haidt, “we see the same pattern with suicide. The older teen girls, 15 to 19 years old, they’re up 70% compared to the first decade of this century. The preteen girls, who had very low rates to begin with, are up 151%.” Those patterns correspond with when social media became available on mobile devices: the year 2009. 

The film goes on to reveal more dangers with our unregulated disinformation intake, noting instances when governments have weaponized social media to incite violence against specific groups. The most prominent example recalls when the Myanmar government used Facebook to spread hate speech, villainizing an ethnic minority group called the Rohingya. Various forms of propaganda published and shared across the nation via Facebook resulted in “mass killings, burning of entire villages, mass rape and other serious crimes against humanity that have led to 700,000 Rohingyan Mulims having to flee the country,” says Cynthia M. Wong of Human Rights Watch. These platforms, like Facebook, make it easy for users to spread lies, which have real, offline ramifications. 

But the experts reviewing these instances assume one thing in common: humanity, at its core, is prone to goodness. Scripture proves time and time again, however, this is not the case. At our core, we all sin and fall short of God’s standard for goodness (Romans 3:23 NIV). 

The Actual Problem

The first scene of the documentary opens with a question: “So, what’s the actual problem here?” As the film progresses, viewers discover that the problem is quite complex, but to put it as starkly as possible, to me, the root of it appears two-fold: 

1. We own and utilize devices that are both helpful tools and severe weapons.

2. We have sin, knit into our very fabric, which makes each of us prone to use these devices more often as weapons than tools. 

In the documentary, experts describe how these platforms are intentionally using our nature against us (i.e. a spike in dopamine in response to a “like” notification, and complicated algorithms that tempt us to click on things we wouldn’t seek out otherwise, etc.). The film would call this our physiological nature, but Scripture describes it as an innate tendency within all of us to do the very things we hate (Rom. 7:15). Social media by itself is not evil or wrong, but it can easily feed our self-centeredness and lead us into sinful thoughts or actions. 

The solution to this problem is also two-fold: 

1. We seek to reform data privacy laws and enact regulations on tech giants (Google, YouTube, Facebook) making billions by subversively influencing user behavior, in order to put these monopolies in check and decrease the harm caused by their products. (See this NY Times article about why the government is suing Google). 

2. We find practical ways to stay educated, alter how we use these platforms, hold each other accountable, and through it all, ask God for wisdom when we scroll and send. We pray for His mercy to disarm things we post that could hurt or endanger others, and obey the Holy Spirit’s direction. 

“The Social Dilemma” calls for much needed regulations and reform to protect data privacy, but no amount of federal or international laws can change the root of humanity’s real problem: the tendency toward sin that exists inside all of us. While sin turns us inward to love and serve ourselves, Christ tells us to love God and serve others. Social media often accelerates and escalates our sinful habit of turning inward. Jesus calls us to, with the aid of the Holy Spirit in each of us, live contrary to our nature: outward.

The 40-Day Dare 

It’s easy to watch documentaries and read articles, but it’s much harder to translate what we learn from them into real life. If you want to change the way you use social media (or the way it uses you), consider taking these steps. Try it for 40 days and notice how you respond. 

1. Pull the plug. I mean it. Shut it all down. Not forever, just 40 days. You can handle anything for 40 days! (Don’t make me pull this card, but let’s all remember Jesus lived without food for that long.) If disconnecting entirely makes you nervous, commit to calling your friends instead of messaging them. 

1. Turn off all notifications & consider setting app limits. After your 40 day fast, see how you do without notifications. Should your presence with those around you be constantly interrupted by others nowhere near you? The only notifications I keep now are for text messages and breaking news. Notice when you hop online too: is it when you’re lonely? When you’re out in public and don’t want to talk to anyone? Are you unintentionally using it to distract from the thoughts racing in your mind? Most smartphones can now track your average screen time, and you can even set “app limits” within this feature. This will help you create boundaries and reform habits by only allowing access when it is helpful to you. (2 Tim 1:7) 

2. Unfollow accounts that disrupt. Whatever that may be—whether it’s a celebrity, a politician, your ex, or those accounts that lead you to envy—if it removes your eyes from truth or goodness and turns them toward anything else, get rid of it. It’s just not worth that. Philippians 4:8 is a good guide here. 

3. Never click on recommended content. As recommended in the film, this will limit the amount of data companies collect and file about you. It also means you won’t be falling for algorithm traps that change your behavior. Take 94-minutes of your evening to watch “The Social Dilemma.” It’s important for us to enter these platforms with eyes wide open. Know what you are using and how it is using you.

4. Never share before you fact-check it yourself. Disinformation is one of the greatest dangers in our modern world, especially during this global pandemic. Who should we believe? Who can we trust? This is why fact-checking and finding multiple sources for the same piece of information is crucial. Journalism is not what it used to be: clicks produce profit and fake news gets exponentially more clicks than the truth. Defund fake news by refusing to click. (Prov. 6:16-19) 

5. Think before you post. Ask the hard questions: will this cause one of my friends to feel tempted, envious, or more insecure? If you’re now mentally defending with, “But I’m not responsible for how my post makes others feel,” is that true? Although we cannot bear the weight of responsibility for how everyone responds to our words, we are responsible for the words themselves. Are you willing to defend your posts as being edifying to others and glorifying to God? (Matthew 12:34-37) 

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul rebukes a group in the church for eating meat sacrificed to idols. Although it is unclear exactly how this act was causing other new believers in the church to sin, we clearly gather from Paul that it was. Even though eating the idol food was “allowed,” it was hurting rather than uplifting others, which is sin. If we replace the “eating food sacrificed to idols” terms with social media language, notice how this passage speaks to how we should conduct ourselves online:

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, [posting something tempting, polarizing, or envy-inducing], won’t that person be emboldened to [do the same]? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I [post or send] causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never [do that] again, so that I will not cause them to fall. (1 Corinthians 8:9-13 NIV paraphrase) 

The day Lent ended, my college roommate and I sat down to debrief about our fast. She noticed how much easier it was to process and pray without the noise of Snapchat and Instagram stories in her head. Over the course of that month, I had found it impossible to read anything and listen to someone talk simultaneously. Without noticing, I had been tuning people out (particularly my roommate) while scrolling through feeds.

In those 40 days, I learned to listen better: I watched my friend’s face the entire time she talked, and heard her loud and clear. We also noticed how much extra time we had: we got homework done faster, started reading fun novels not required for class, and planned more movie nights and off-campus adventures with friends. We both echoed that the critical-inner-voices, which usually scorned our bodies whenever we glanced in a mirror, had quieted some. 

We felt good.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claire Zasso was born and raised in California with many books and mountain air. Currently, she works for a Christian international relief organization, supporting hurricane recovery programs. She loves coffee, scuba diving, leading worship with her guitar, hiking in the Sierra Nevadas, jamming to classic rock, and showing others the freedom found in knowing Jesus.