By Thomas Hogge, Year 12
The Social Dilemma is the new Netflix documentary-drama hybrid that’s created quite the discussion surrounding the topics of social media and its ethical implications.
The documentary’s core focus is on exploring the damaging human impact of the world’s largest and most popular social media networks through highly captivating interviews with a wide array of high ranking technological experts.
The film’s secondary focus, however, is a highly uninspired and out-of-place fictional narrative that adds absolutely nothing of value to the otherwise captivating documentary.
I was left feeling very polarised by the time The Social Dilemma was over, as there was such a difference in quality between the two parts that make up the film. I truly do not understand why they didn’t just choose to make the documentary entirely composed of the extremely interesting interviews, rather than include what felt like a generic and uneventful episode of Black Mirror. The dramatised narrative does not lead anywhere, and at points feels very reminiscent of the internet safety videos that we all so fondly remember being shown in IT class. If I were one of the former high-ranking Google or Instagram employees that had shared invaluable information in my interview for this documentary, I would feel rather insulted for it to then be accompanied by this useless narrative. It feels as though the dramatisation only exists because Netflix thinks the audience cannot relate to the information being relayed to them unless they see it embodied in the form of a teen melodrama.
Despite this major flaw with the film however, I would still recommend The Social Dilemma just to see the interviews, as they are fascinating and provide an eye-opening view on the world we live in today. It’s just a shame that the dramatised part is intertwined with the film (or that it was included in the first place); making it a pain if you only want to watch the interviews and skip through the narrative.
With all of the discussion of social media addiction and other such problems in The Social Dilemma, Netflix has to be commended for its efforts in making what is otherwise an extremely intriguing film that looks into the problems plaguing our modern online landscape as non-addictive and bland as possible.
Beautiful review as always Tom.