A "Social Dilemma" or a social call to action?

 I finally saw the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma" this weekend. While I have been aware of most of the issues created by social media platforms such as facebook and the like, I will give a lot of credit to the creators for putting it all together. It is a must watch for many reasons and through this blog I want to summarize the important ones.

First up, there are some key facts laid down in the documentary - 

• Social media and in general many services we use today created by big companies such as FB, Google, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok are fundamentally designed in a way to make them addictive. Experts in human psychology are consulted in designing these services and human vulnerabilities are ruthlessly exploited to achieve that purpose
• Senior leaders and executives in these companies are well aware of the nature of their products and services and the potential hazardous nature of them
• The "attention economy" or in other words the rat race to keep all of us literally "hooked" to our smartphones to feed us ads is fundamentally baked into the business models of these companies. That is the primary way for most of them to be profitable and to keep growing further
• While personalization of services to users for basic things (like restaurant recommendation for example) is beneficial, personalization of news and information is dangerous and could eventually be catastrophic. Facts cannot be personalized. Period.  
• By the very nature and design of social media, sensational claims and untruths travel much faster (6x per MIT) and wider than does the truth (which has a habit of being a tad bit boring most of the time)

It is hard for me (and I think you'll agree with me here) to believe that any of the statements are not true. We have all experienced it first hand with our own use of smartphones and these services built on top of them. The first step therefore is to acknowledge these fundamental facts.

Let's now analyze how the social media platforms and services have negatively affected us (by and large) during the last decade or so of intense social media boom -

• At an individual level
• Constant sense of anxiety, obvious self-centeredness, an inability/fear to connect and interact with real people, closed-mindedness due to "echo-chamber" effects
• At a community level
• Spread of tribalism and and "us vs them" mindset build-up, no real connections with neighbors or even within families, inability to form relationships with people we disagree with
• At a societal level
• Extreme polarization of political / ideological views, lack of one consistent set of facts or truths that summarizes reality, breakdown of long standing norms of public and private discourse and behavior, hyper-attention on fringe minorities point of views, radicalization of population through conspiracy theory groups and disinformation spreading campaigns, sycophantic following of political leaders (as if they can do no wrong!) and a general breakdown of the democratic principles that we've taken for granted (as if dictators and authoritarian regimes don't exist)

This is not to say that social media platforms and services are not useful to us - they are, but like everything else, we should analyze the cost we are paying to "be used" to get those services given "we are the product" here!

One particular deep concern of mine is around the fate of the two largest democracies in the world - India and USA. Both of them seem to headed in the direction of increasing chaos and unrest. Social media has undeniably played a huge role (and to be fair, they have been exploited by the political class and other vested interest groups) in getting these countries where they are today. Thanks to social media (and the traditional media too), citizenry have forgotten what their true role in a properly functioning democracy really is - to hold the party in power accountable for their actions irrespective of who it "voted for". Blind trust in anybody, anything or (in today's world) any "platform" is dangerous and history has proven this time and time again (it's not even been 100 years since Hitler came by!)

OK, so what do we do from here on to rectify the situation at hand?

• At individual level
• Take steps to avoid over dependence on social media as much as possible. Put down a price for your time and data when interacting on them. Live in the "real" world and talk to real people as much as you can, whenever you can
• At a community level
• Spread awareness about the social media, how it operates, how it can be put to bad use and so on. Participate in community events and get to know your neighbors and local communities, volunteer your time towards helping others in need
• Listen to differing points of view with an open mind. Avoid jumping to conclusions and "labeling" people based on their views on a particular subject. If you cannot agree, "agree to disagree" and move on... 
• At a societal level
• Regulate, regulate and regulate social media platforms and services. Singular focus on company bottom-line growth without any constraints on societal impacts is dangerous. 
• Until the above happens, be a hawk when it comes to relying on your news sources. Be as vigilant as you are when buying something valuable (i.e. shop around, price check, quality check yada yada yada...you get the gist). Understand and learn to separate fact from opinion and watch out for "media" folks who feed you the two together
• Remember our true role in a democracy and fundamentally treat the government and it's leaders as "business partners" - there is give and take and each side is accountable to honor their side of the contract. Be vigilant or you run the risk of being exploited by the business partner. Also, remember that a strong opposition is necessary to audit the "business partner" when suspicious activities occur. Progress on initiatives may be slow because of such checks and balances but we get longer term stability in return (which we are under-valuing as a society)

There are so many other things that the documentary talks about but the above is my gist of it...hopefully, it makes some sense and we take actions to course correct while we still can...thanks for reading!