During this time of intense technological skepticism, the conversation about the downsides of social media could benefit from nuance and expertise. The social dilemma— a Netflix documentary about tech addiction — has plenty of the latter but almost none of the former. The result is a paranoid film that treats virtually everyone like helpless puppets of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google executive Sundar Pichai, and the nefarious systems they oversee.
Although it is a documentary, it tries to tell a representative and fictional story, featuring the eccentric actor Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men‘s Pete Campbell) as the voice of an infamous algorithm that brainwashed a typical American teenager. These scenes are uniformly bad, which makes Chill Madness seem subtle in comparison.
The rest of the film, which consists of conversations with various former tech employees, isn’t much better. Most of the interviewees are aspiring whistleblowers with an inflated regard for their technological achievements. They think the systems they’ve invented are so incredibly powerful, intelligent and addictive that the human brain can’t cope with them. It’s pure moral panic from start to finish.
A single voice of reason in the film, psychologist Jonathan Haidt, suggests that parents can solve some technological problems by talking to their children about social media and limiting their use of smartphones at night. Unsurprisingly, this practical, non-hysterical advice is relegated to the end credits.