I absolutely hated the documentary because I think it was done to provoke fear in people. If this documentary was made to inform, it would have had real information rather than completely biased people. There were many questions that came up while watching, for example why is it a problem that they are making so much money? They are not stealing from me and they are not manipulating me to click like. Why is the algorithm so bad? Social media is for entertaining, so if you entertain me, what's the problem. When they say that there is "a third person manipulating the communication between people", what do they mean? The only way to communicate through social media is direct messages and chats, so where's the manipulation? Diego brought up the argument that his manipulation is because the algorithm forces you to stay more online. In my opinion, I'd rather be entertained than bored. When you go on social media, you do it in your spare time, which is why it made me mad when it was showing teens on their phones in class.
Furthermore, the modern world is so difficult to navigate without your devices that complete device isolation is nearly impossible for the average office worker. This is why it confused me so much when they suggested going offline altogether. The people in this documentary are acknowledging that there is addiction and that it is bad, but they seem to proceed to blame the user, it is not until the end where this is explained in more detail. Most of the movie revolved around teenage addiction and framed it as if it was their fault and they had to fix it. Stop waiting for 13-year-olds to solve the problems you created. They touch suicide rates lightly and in the documentary they connect it to social networks, although they do not present real evidence. The documentary is very biased and doesn't even acknowledge the beneficial sides of social media. It talks about manipulating the human mind and then proceeds to manipulating the human mind by adding panic-instilling sound and image effects.
This documentary is right and wrong in many ways, but the worst part is that it puts you in a perspective that the world is black and white, therefore right and wrong, which is not how the world works. The problems they pose are not caused by social media, social media is simply accelerating awareness. In the end, it's not about social media, it's about society.