The Social Dilemma Movie Analysis Essay Example

In 2020, an amazing documentary on Netflix was released called The Social Dilemma, which is an amazing interpretation of how the internet and social media affect the whole population of the world. It showcases many former executives, authors, and social psychologists. Written by Jeff Orlwoski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis, is a masterpiece showing how they expressed their beliefs on the negative effect of social media by using many different rhetorical techniques including ethos, pathos, and logos.

This newer documentary gives many examples of ethos, but one main example would be the credibility from someone within. The Social Dilemma features a Former Google Design Ethicist; Co-Founder & President of The Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris. Tristam gives a very eye opening story of one experience while working at Google. His story tells about when he had realized that Google was building itself to become addictive to its users. Tristan was in awe that no one else was realizing this and talking about it, so he created a presentation to spread awareness of this addictiveness, and how to stop it. The presentation was spread all throughout the company, with many people responding with how it was true and could affect lives. However, after a while of everyone talking about it, the buzz the presentation created just disappeared.

Unfortunately, many people have succumbed to this addictive way of life, and it has affected drastically how people feel about themselves. The documentary features a plot for a family, who use a type of platform on an everyday basis. The Social Dilemma pulls on the heartstrings of its audience, using pathos, by showing a skit of the younger sibling in the family posting a picture of herself on this platform. You see the girl get nice comments on the post, but then a user comments “elephant ears.” You later see the girl staring at herself in a mirror, touching her ears covered by her hair, and start crying. This skit was not real, however it shows an example of how it affects younger girls in modern-day real life.

The Social Dilemma shows logos, by giving statistics on the rate of self harm and suicide of younger girls; grouped in the ages of 10-14, and 15-19. The statistics show that after social media was introduced, the number of non-fatal self harm in teenage girls was very stable in 2009, until about 2011, where the number drastically increased by over 62%, along with pre-teen girls increasing to above 189%. The suicide rates show the exact same statistics as well. The numbers in suicides for teenage girls increased by above 70%, and the numbers for pre-teens were above 151%.

The whole world uses social media and thrives off it. However, many users become addicted, and lean on social media to control their day to day lives. The whole message of The Social Dilemma is to exploit platforms of their manipulative antics, and how they use It’s users purely on profit.