Impact of Social Media and The Social Dilemma.

"Only two organization call their customers " users",

illegal drugs & software"

- Edward Tufte

 The Impact of Social Communication and Social Media

I recently watched the powerful film, The Social Dilemma. Initially hearing about the movie, I had a pre-conceived idea about the film and was expecting an hour and a half of the same preachy "technology = bad, consumers = brainwashed. I was pleasantly surprised and equally disturbed. Although the film is carried with frightening statistics of suicide rates of teenagers and hours accumulated dedicated to screen-time, it displayed the powerful, yet eyrie message. Government-free control, subliminal influence on people’s opinions, and fake news distract us from real-world issues. Not only that, but we, the users, are also the product. No matter how many “ad-blockers” I download for my laptop and computer, I am still haunted by targeted ads run by algorithms and bots. Technological control like this was somewhat predicted by studies done as far back as the 1970s and 80s. If we knew online social communication would turn out the way it has, would there even have been a way to stop it? As of right now, it cannot be stopped, although I will say deleting Twitter, Instagram and Facebook was the best decision I ever made.