How “The Social Dilemma” Calls Out Gen Z
Netflix’s The Social Dilemma is a provocative, cerebral documentary that dives deeply — and disturbingly — into the ways social media has poisoned the fabric of culture, society, and health around the world. The filmography of this documentary is stellar, and justifies an article of its own. But a big part of the movie’s message focuses on how Generation Z, affectionately known as “Gen Z” or “Zoomers”, has been especially impacted by social media.
For those who don’t know, Gen Z are the kids born roughly after 1996 through the present. The key thing that differentiates them from Millennials is that Gen Z can’t remember 9/11 and likely can’t remember life without the Internet. They have grown up in a world that, in so many ways, is perpetually on the edge.
I am part of Gen Z. Albeit, I’m at the older end of my generation. But I have never known a world without videogames or cellphones or, yes, Google.
They have grown up in a world that, in so many ways, is perpetually on the edge.
Watching The Social Dilemma as a “Zoomer” was a little bit like listening to your parents talk to your teacher about you. As I was watching the film, with its investigative A-plot and pseudo-fictional B-plot, I totally recognized the claims that were said about Gen Z and how we use the Internet. When the teenage boy portrayed by Skyler Gisondo, “Ben”, tries to give up his phone for a week, only to realize that life without it is social suicide, I resonated. When Ben’s younger sister is shown critiquing every minute detail of her appearance and stressing over Instagram comments, I thought of girls (and guys, by the way) just like that who I know.
It’s all true. Generation Z has been fundamentally changed by social media and the Internet. I never quite connected the depth of this until watching The Social Dilemma. I can only imagine that younger Zoomers are even less aware of just how toxic our generation’s relationship with the Internet often is. Nothing in human history has changed the social reality of so many people on such a scale before. When I was in third grade, having a flip phone was “cool” and a big deal, but you could get by without it. That was way back in the mid-2000s. In 2021, a third grader without a smartphone is at a steep social disadvantage. When Fortnite is the playground, smartphones and Internet access are like a paywall around popularity.
The Social Dilemma points this out, with almost eerie calm, when the mother of the film’s fictional family remarks that all the other kids have smartphones. It’s a catch-22: parents want their children to be healthy and happy, so they buy them a phone in order to fit in, but that phone is also what is then making their children unhealthy and unhappy. But the damage has already been done to the social fabric of today’s kids and teenagers. To take away the phones, the Internet, the TikTok accounts now would be to destroy the social and cultural environment of an entire generation, one that doesn’t even realize it needs to change.
My generation is often reminded that it is our responsibility to save the world one day. We have been told countless times, in one phrase or another, “you have the Internet, you have no excuse not to do amazing things”. It is difficult to do that when, as The Social Dilemma has revealed to me, the Internet is being used by very powerful people to manipulate the globe, especially young people. Gen Z is at the mercy of the adults of today who are designing software, websites, code, and marketing schemes.
The Internet is here to stay. Social media is here to stay. And, as someone who doesn’t remember a world before Facebook, I don’t believe that social media is inherently bad. The idea of connecting people through the Internet — long lost family members, old friends from high school, business networks — is innocent enough on its own. One of my oldest friends I originally met over the Internet. That is far from uncommon for Gen Z. What is the problem, and this is the point of The Social Dilemma, is how social media is being used and strangled into a manipulative advertising machine.
Gen Z is at the mercy of the adults of today.
Most people would be pretty concerned if they saw a car sales man scream in a 10-year-old’s face about LOW LOW PRICES in the toy aisle at Walmart. They should be equally concerned about coders and advertisers stalking and exploiting kids all over the Internet from behind the anonymous safety of computer screens.
From my generation to the world: you’re right that we are the future. So, don’t let disinformation, advertising quotas, and profit margins crush our future.
Watch The Social Dilemma, exclusively on Netflix.
