Experts have long discussed how we have become addicted to social media, and that addiction has only been inflamed in recent years.
A new Netflix documentary paints an alarming and sobering picture of the extent of that addiction and how social networks have capitalized on it, catapulting tech companies into global powerhouses in the process. "The Social Dilemma" explores different aspects and effects of the online world, including the lucrative attention-economy, addictive recommendation algorithms, misinformation, political polarization, and more.
The doc features ex-Google design ethicist and president of The Center For Humane Technology Tristan Harris, computer scientist Jaron Lanier, author Shoshana Zuboff, ex-Facebook director of monetization Tim Kendall, data scientist and author Cathy O'Neil, Asana co-founder and ex-Facebook engineering lead Justin Rosenstein, early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, and many others.
You might want to throw your phone across the room by the end of the hour-and-a-half-long docudrama. But fret not! The last five minutes is actually semi-uplifting as the industry experts dole out steps you can take to limit how much you use your phone and the addicting technology that lives in it.
We've rounded them up below — take a look: