netflix documentary social experiment

The technology that connects us

Also controls us.

The dilemma

Never before have a handful of tech designers had such control over the way billions of us think, act, and live our lives.

The Mental Health Dilemma

A 5,000 person study found that higher social media use correlated with self-reported declines in mental and physical health and life satisfaction.

— American Journal of Epidemiology, 2017

The Democracy Dilemma

The # of countries with political disinformation campaigns on social media doubled in the past 2 years.

— New York Times, 2019

The Discrimination Dilemma

64% of the people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there.

— Internal Facebook report, 2018

take action

Help change how technology is designed, regulated, and used .

Share the dilemma

Reboot your use

REbuild the System

2 Primetime Emmy Awards

38M viewers in our first 4 weeks

Webby award winner

From the creators of Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, The Social Dilemma blends documentary investigation and narrative drama to disrupt the disrupters, unveiling the hidden machinations behind everyone’s favorite social media and search platforms.

a youth-led debate on regulation

As policymakers debate how to regulate social media, we’re inviting students to join the debate by uploading a 2-minute video with their proposed policy solution by March 21, 2022 for a chance at a $500 scholarship and an appearance on Newsweek’s podcast The Debate .

host your own screening

Be part of our Virtual Tour and join the thousands of others who are hosting conversations about The Social Dilemma using our discussion guides and promotional tools.

take a social media reboot

That toxic feeling? It’s not by accident, it’s by design. Take back control with our 7-day Social Media Reboot featuring tips to realign your relationship with technology from experts featured in the film.

our start-up grant winners

The young people most impacted by exploitative technology can also be the ones to help re-engineer it. Meet the inspiring winners of our start-up grant, a competition organized in partnership with LookUp.Live.

our first impact report

We’ve been humbled by the response to the film and the impact we have achieved together. Check out highlights from The Social Dilemma’s first four months in our impact report.

“Perhaps the single most lucid, succinct, and profoundly terrifying analysis of social media ever created for mass consumption.” — IndieWire

“so relevant and of-the-moment it’s practically already in the future” — Hollywood Reporter

“ The Social Dilemma may finally convince you that we’re being watched, manipulated, and misled by unscrupulous platforms and attention-harvesting algorithms.” –Vanity Fair

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Social Dilemma

Explores the dangerous human impact of social networking; tech experts sound the alarm on their own creations. Explores the dangerous human impact of social networking; tech experts sound the alarm on their own creations. Explores the dangerous human impact of social networking; tech experts sound the alarm on their own creations.

• Jeff Orlowski-Yang
• Vickie Curtis
• Davis Coombe
• Tristan Harris
• Jeff Seibert
• Bailey Richardson
• 642 User reviews
• 90 Critic reviews
• 78 Metascore
• 8 wins & 22 nominations total

Top cast 61

• Self - Google, Former Design Ethicist …

• Self - Twitter, Former Executive …

• Self - Instagram, Early Team

• Self - Google, Former Experience Design Consultant …

• Self - Facebook, Former Operations Manager …

• Self - YouTube, Former Engineer …

• Self - Apple, Former Director of Corporate PR …

• Self - Firefox & Mozilla Labs, Former Employee …

• Self - Twitter, Former Senior VP of Engineering

• Self - Facebook, Former Executive …

• Self - Facebook, Former Engineer …

• Self - NVIDIA, Former Product Manager
• (as Randima 'Randy' Fernando)

• Self - Founding Father of Virtual Reality …

• Self - Facebook, Early Investor …

• Self - Harvard Business School, Professor Emeritus
• (as Shoshana Zuboff Ph.D.)

• Self - Stanford University, School of Medicine, Medical Director of Addiction Medicine
• (as Dr. Anna Lembke)

• Self - Anna's Son
• (as James Lembke)

• Self - Anna's Daughter
• (as Mary Lembke)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Jeff Orlowski-Yang was a heavy Facebook user before making the film. He's not now.

Self - Facebook, Former Operations Manager : We've created a system that biases towards false information. Not because we want to, but because false information makes the companies more money than the truth. The truth is boring.

• Crazy credits "Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse." - Sophocles
• Alternate versions After its Sundance premiere in January 2020, the documentary was updated to include a segment on the growing number of social media conspiracy theories related to COVID-19.
• Connections Featured in De vooravond: Episode #1.17 (2020)

User reviews 642

The unnecessary scripted part is distracting.

• natsthename
• Sep 11, 2020
• How long is The Social Dilemma? Powered by Alexa
• September 9, 2020 (United States)
• United States
• Official Netflix
• Official Site
• Song Đề Xã Hội
• Exposure Labs
• Argent Pictures
• The Space Program
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Runtime 1 hour 34 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Netflix’s ‘The Social Dilemma’ Is Totally Freaking People Out—Here’s Why It’s a Must-Watch for Parents

Netflix 's The Social Dilemma has officially convinced us that we're living in the Matrix—okay, not really, but it has seriously got us thinking.

In the new documentary, a group of tech experts come together to discuss surveillance capitalism, the science behind technology addiction and the harmful effects of social media (especially among children). Essentially, per the film, what started as a harmless way to stay connected with friends has turned into a dangerous tool of manipulation, and most users aren't even aware of it.

Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, explains, "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." Whoa .

Below, see three reasons why this Netflix film is a must-watch for parents .

1. It Clearly Breaks Down How The Internet Can Harm Children's Mental Health

You might want to think twice before you let your kids bring their phones to the dinner table. According to the documentary, because of social media, self-harming has trippled and suicide rates have risen by 150 percent among children.

Harris said, "These technology products were not designed by child psychologists who are trying to protect and nurture children. They were just designed to make these algorithms that were really good at recommending the next video to you or really good at getting you to take a photo with a filter on it."

He continues, "It's not just that it's controlling where they spend their attention. Social media starts to dig deeper and deeper down into the brain stem and take over kids' sense of self-worth and identity."

2. It Explains Why Your Kids' Online Activity Is Never Private

If there's one thing you'll learn from the experts in this film, it's that data privacy doesn't exist for anyone. Google searches, social media interactions and even scrolling patterns are tracked and used to manipulate consumers.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former VP of growth at Facebook, says in the doc, "Companies like Facebook and Google would roll out lots of little, tiny experiments that they were constantly doing on users. And over time, by running these constant experiments, you develop the most optimal way to get users to do what you want them to do. It’s manipulation." Talk about disturbing.

3. It Reveals How These Social Platforms Were Built To Keep Kids Addicted

It legit sounds like a Black Mirror plot, but experts in the film reveal that these social platforms not only try to keep more people engaged, but also, they try to get users to share more personal information online—and that's definitely not ideal if you want to protect your child's privacy.

Harris says, "They're competing for your attention. So, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, companies like this, their business model is to keep people engaged on the screen."

Tim Kendall, former president of Pinterest, adds, "Let's figure out how to get as much of this person's attention as we possibly can. How much time can we get you to spend? How much of your life can we get you to give to us?" It's certainly a lot to think about.

To stream the entire documentary, you can view it exclusively on Netflix .

Parenting Debate: Should You Put Photos of Your Kids on Social Media?

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The Social Dilemma

Where to watch.

Watch The Social Dilemma with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

Clear-eyed and comprehensive, The Social Dilemma presents a sobering analysis of our data-mined present.

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Jeff Orlowski-Yang

Randy Fernando

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‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix Will Convince You To Finally Delete Facebook

Where to stream:.

• The Social Dilemma
• documentaries

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’ on Max, a Heartbreaking Documentary Rife With Tragic Irony

Stream it or skip it: ‘biggest heist ever’ on netflix, a doc about a curious couple of cryptocurrency scammers, where is heather morgan, aka razzlekhan, from netflix's 'biggest heist ever' now, stream it or skip it: ‘skin hunters’ on max, a moody docuseries about a gruesome bribes for bodies scheme in poland.

While watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix, a new documentary about the potentially devastating impact of social media on the world, I tried very hard not to check my phone. Yet even as I listened to Tristan Harris, president and a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and a former Google employee, talk about the dangers of social media addiction, my fingers itched to refresh my Instagram feed. That’s not, this documentary argues, entirely a personal failing on my part. It’s because Instagram, and the many social media apps like it, have been designed to get users to give their service as much as our lives as we can possibly give. And, once we’ve given that to them, they use that information to predict and change our behavior.

You’ve probably heard that line before, particularly if you made an attempt to understand the Cambridge Analytica data hacking scandal that plagued Facebook in 2018.  The Social Dilemma— which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and was acquired by Netflix shortly after—doesn’t exactly reveal any shocking new information, but it does contextualize it in a way that may scare you. The basic gist: If you thought you were safe from manipulation via Silicon Valley—if you were too smart, too technologically savvy, or too strong-willed for that—you thought wrong. No one is safe, not even the former Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest executives who go on record in this film to say how messed up they think this whole thing is.

Director Jeff Orlowski (known for his environmental documentaries, Chasing Coral and Chasing Ice ) has scored a lot of candid interviews, with the main narrative led by Harris, who’s made something of a career of speaking out about the tech industry’s immoral ways. These interviews are as fascinating as they are horrifying.

“What I want people to know is that every single action you take [online] is carefully monitored and recorded,” says Jeff Seibert, a former executive at Twitter. “Exactly what image you stop and look at, for how long you look at it.”

Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist who is considered one of the founders of virtual reality tech, thinks the age-old adage that “we are the product” when it comes to social media is “too simplistic. It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product. … That’s the only thing that there is to make money from—changing what you do, how you think, who you are. It’s a gradual change, it’s slight. If you can go to somebody and say, ‘Give me $10 million and I will change the world 1 percent in the direction you want it to change…’ it’s the world! That’s worth a lot of money.”

“The way to think about it is 2.7 billion Truman Shows,” says early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, of the way Facebook caters a feed to each individual user. “Each person has their own reality with their own facts. Over time, you have the false sense that everyone agrees with you because everyone in your news feed sounds just like you. And once you’re in that state, it turns out you’re very easily manipulated.”

What’s slightly less fascinating is the dramatization featuring Santa Clarita Diet actor Skyler Gisondo as a Facebook-addicted teen, and Mad Men star Vincent Kartheiser as the personification of the evil algorithm that keeps him addicted. While it’s obviously supposed to keep audiences engaged between sometimes-boring interviews with executives, it comes off as simply silly, not to mention outdated, considering most teens no longer use Facebook. The melodrama of those scenes makes me wonder if The Social Dilemma will be mocked in 50 years’ time, á la the 1936 anti-marijuana documentary Reefer Madness that became a musical spoof in 1998 starring Alan Cumming and Kristen Bell.

It’s also a little weird to be watching this searing indictment of the tech industry on Netflix, one of the biggest tech giants of them all. Did Netflix not take all of the manipulative and addiction-forming strategies of these social media apps and apply them to the film industry? I mean, autoplay? The algorithm? The fact that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once said his company’s greatest competition was sleep? While YouTube does come up in regards to conspiracy theory rabbit holes, the subject of streaming is otherwise never mentioned—perhaps unsurprising, given Orlowski’s previous relationship with Netflix, which released his film Chasing Coral.

But mostly, The Social Dilemma is all too convincing in its message that Silicon Valley has been handed an unprecedented level of power thanks to technological advances, and that it’s not handling that power in an even remotely ethical way. You may come away from The Social Dilemma convinced to delete your Facebook account. But even if you do, the damage has been done. And at this point, is unclear if the tech industry—even if it woke up with a conscious, or was forced to have one in the form of government regulation—has the power to fix it.

Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix

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‘The Social Dilemma’ Trailer: Netflix Doc Details How Social Media Manipulates Its Users

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To some, social media is evil, and Netflix ’s upcoming “ The Social Dilemma ” documentary is going to tell you why. The streaming service unveiled the trailer for its upcoming title, which premieres September 9 and promises an in-depth — and thoroughly harrowing — look at how social media platforms and algorithms manipulate individuals and contribute to issues such as viral conspiracy theories, teenage mental health issues, rampant misinformation, and political polarization.

The film’s interviewees include Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology; the co-inventor of the Facebook “Like” button, Justin Rosenstein; Tim Kendall, former President of Pinterest and former Director of Monetization at Facebook; Cathy O’Neil, author of “Weapons of Math Destruction”; and Rashida Richardson, Director of Policy at the AI Now Institute.

“The Social Dilemma” is directed by Jeff Orlowski, who previously created hit nature documentaries such as “Chasing Ice” and “Chasing Coral.”

“The algorithms control what we see, when we see it, how we see it, with no regard for the truth or for humanity,” Orlowski said in a statement. “These platforms are driven by a business model that values attention above quality, and the algorithms will systematically push users to more and more polarized and extreme thinking in search of anything that will keep us engaged.”

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich praised “The Social Dilemma” in his B+ review out of Sundance in January and noted that the documentary offered a compelling argument for viewers to begin thinking about their social media usage differently.

“Is ‘The Social Dilemma’ persuasive enough to convince a MAGA zealot to stop binge-watching Ben Shapiro nonsense and buy a subscription to a newspaper? It’s hard to say,” Ehrlich said in his review. “But the film will definitely make you more cognizant of your own behavior — not just of how you use the internet, but how the internet uses you. And it will do so in a way that feels less like an intervention than it does a wake-up call; Orlowski and his subjects recognize how the internet has created a simultaneous utopia and dystopia, and they aren’t under any delusions that we’re able to wish it away. Their documentary isn’t instructive so much as directional, and thereby most fascinating for the implications it leaves you to consider on your own time.”

Check out the trailer for “The Social Dilemma” below:

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