Telling people to delete Facebook won’t fix the internet

Is your teenage son falling in with a bad crowd? Does your tween daughter have low self-esteem and serious impulse-control problems? Are your family dinners brief and poorly attended? If this sounds familiar, your household may be a victim of… social media. We’ve seen years of escalating (and reasonable) fears that Facebook, YouTube, and other big social networks are bad for their users. The Social Dilemma, a docu-drama that debuts on Netflix next week, is meant as a vivid cautionary tale. It’s actually something a bit weirder: a primer on manipulative interface design in the form of an earnest after-school special or a feature-length anti-drug PSA. Directed by Jeff Orlowski, The Social Dilemma is an enjoyably lucid explanation of how... Continue reading…