Let me start with this:  The Social Dilemma is a must watch.

The half-movie-half-documentary shows how we managed to bring out the worse out of something that at the beginning was so seemingly good and pure, such as technology, social media and online interactions.

It focuses on three main topics:

• How the whole world became addicted to social media and the negative impact it has on our self-worth and our interactions with other people.
• How we managed to turn the information age into the disinformation age with the proliferation of fake news.

• And lastly, one of the most interesting ones which is also related to the previous one: echo-chambers. As the name suggest, an echo-chamber is formed when you are constantly exposed only to content that is aligned with your views while ignoring or downplaying as “fake” content that goes against what you believe. Online platforms are so optimized to keep you engaged (more engagement = more advertisers = more profits) that they will serve you content specifically tailored to your interests, creating said echo-chambers. This might seem harmless if you think of “content” only as pictures from your friends or news about your favorite sports team. But it gets bad when you think about politics. On echo-chambers, fake news spread like fire, views are radicalized and violence is often fueled.

I work in the digital advertising industry and I can’t say I wasn’t aware of the effects social media and technology have in our real life behaviour. I even admit that I’ve harnessed the power of many of the techniques mentioned in the video to achieve many projects’ objetives in the past. However, it hits different when you think that you too are being “played” for someone else’s gain. So, after watching The Social Dilemma, I applied many of the recommendations mentioned in the movie and in the website of the Centre for Humane Technology (I particularly like these ones). I believe they have quite a positive impact in my quality of life.

Note: I got kind of lazy and I’m actually writing this 3 months after watching the documentary. At the beginning I implemented almost all of the recommendations of the CHT list, but as of right now I’m not applying them all anymore. I stopped using my phone on grayscale, I re-downloaded some social media apps and removed my 45-minutes-a-day time limit from my phone. However, my daily screen-time has still decreased by quite a lot. Without counting the my work-related usage (mail, calls, and stuff) I’m at around 2 hours a day.

So, as I said at the beginning of this Article (?), go watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. You won’t be disappointed (at least not at the movie, but you may feel disappointed at everything else).