Just a few weeks ago, I was forced by my mom to watch a movie that I had very little interest in. The title itself, “The Social Dilemma,” made me uninterested and bored without even pressing play. The only reason I ended up watching it was because my mom kept saying I would learn something from this movie and open my eyes to the dangers of social media. 

The movie shows us how social media manipulates us and how it is ruining our way of thinking. I was very irritated while watching the movie because I thought it was going to be about older people explaining why social media is bad and how teenagers are dumb or something typical like that. 

However, I was wrong. Sitting through and watching it, I came to the realization that social media is not only toxic to young teens but also very manipulative to young minds. 

According to the movie “The Social Dilemma” social media is changing what we choose to think as humans and the process we go through to have opinions on certain subjects.  When I go talk to my friends and we have a conversation about any topic and we discuss it, they will have a completely different view of it and I think how can they think this way when the facts are right there for you to see. Well I found out that this is because everyone’s feed is different. The movie says how you’re fed is designed to match how you already feel, so we don’t always receive the full story on a topic if it doesn’t fit the opinion that we already have. 

In this day and age, with propaganda being put out for everyone to see and read, it can be hard to tell what is real and what is not.

“The Social Dilemma” movie says that this is exactly what the creators of social media want. It says politicians are becoming so good at knowing what gets to us and so good at creating fake news that we take it in as if it was true.

I see this being done a lot of the time on my different social media feeds. I will be scrolling through and see a post somebody has made and I will go and look up to see if it is true or not, and I will find no evidence of that being true. This just shows that they will put out propaganda, and teens won’t even fact check or do any research before posting.

The movie also says that the less and less we actually think for ourselves and believe this false information, the more and more they complete their agenda to manipulate us to believe this false information. Ever since I’ve watched “The Social Dilemma,” I’m starting to realize this more and more that teens will believe whatever is put out there without even giving it a second thought of if it is true or false. 

I’ve now gone on to realize that this is an actual issue that we face against social media. There are however ways we as teens can go against this and stop ourselves from believing the false information being given to us. Some few things we could do to stop false information from being spread is so our research.

Upon watching “The Social Dilemma,” anytime before I post something to my feed, I always go and fact check it. I know it may seem extra to do research, but just taking a little bit of time to do the research can be beneficial to everyone later on.

In general, don’t read or listen to any source of information that has been known to be biased or not factual in the past. I have had to go through quite a lot of my following to see if there were any biased accounts putting out any false information. With that being said getting news or information from any “meme” is not a good source to get information from either.

We should try to be careful with what we put out and what we are taking in and believing to be true. And we have to make sure we are not forming an opinion based on propaganda and lies.