Documentary

The Social Dilemma

Sep 2020 🇺🇸 Netflix / Exposure Labs

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The Social Dilemma is a 2020 Netflix documentary directed by Jeff Orlowski that combines on-camera interviews with former technology executives and engineers with a dramatized storyline about a teenager's social media use. Tim Kendall appears on camera identified as Facebook's former director of monetization, former president of Pinterest, and CEO of Moment, describing how he and colleagues built advertising and engagement systems aimed at capturing as much attention as possible, and drawing the same comparison to tobacco-industry design techniques he later gave in Congressional testimony. The film cites outside data linking rising self-harm-related hospitalizations among teenage girls to the period of widespread smartphone adoption, presenting this as an association its interview subjects point to rather than proof of one cause. TechKids Foundation includes this entry specifically for Kendall's on-camera role, distinct from this library's existing entries for the same film under other voices' profiles.

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CITATION

Orlowski, Jeff (director), featuring Tim Kendall. The Social Dilemma. Exposure Labs / Netflix. Sundance premiere January 26, 2020; Netflix release September 9, 2020.

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