00:00:43

Interviews

The movie begins with clips from a series of interviews with former employees of tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Each interviewee discusses the issues they see with social media, all surrounding the unethical design of features.

00:03:50

Family Introduction

The movie shifts between interviews and a story of a fictional family. This family of 5 has 3 teenage children. The oldest daughter, Cassandra, is completely against social media, the middle son, Ben, is a frequent user of social media, and the youngest daughter, Isla, is obessed with social media.

00:06:00

Tristan Harris Talk

Tristan Harris gives a talk on what's behind the commonly identified issues in the tech industry. He questions why no one is working on making tech less addictive. Harris tells the story where as a Google employee, he made a presentation about how Google employees are ethically responsible for creating less addictive products. The presentation was sent to his coworkers and they were only shortly entertained by the idea and no action was taken.

00:15:20

Survellience Capitalism

The movie discusses Survellience Capitalism, "capitalism profiting off of the infinite tracking of everywhere everyone goes by large technology companies whose business model is to make sure that advertisers are as successful as possible". To demonstrate that companies are tracking everything we do including how long we look at images, viewers are introduced to the engagement clock. An clock "inside" of devices that tracks how long users view certain posts, photos, profiles, etc. At this part of the movie, people "inside" of the users phone predict every move the user will make.

00:21:20

Ben Sends a Wave

The people "inside" of Ben's phone panic as he stops engaging with it. To fix this, they send him a notification which engages him to send a wave to Rebecca a girl he is interested in. As he is about to send the wave, the people "inside" of his phone make money by showung him an ad while he is engaged.

00:23:20

Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab teaches students how to use everything we know about the psychology of what persuades people and to build that into technology. Many prominent Silicon Valley figures went through this class, where now as growth engineers they work to make technology more persuasive.

00:25:15

Photo Tagging

Rebecca tags Ben in a photo while they are both in class, causing him to pick up his phone and view the photo. Simultaneously, Jeff Seibert, a former Twitter executive, explains that actions such as photo tagging are specifically designed to tap into the weaknesses of human psychology. He questions why the notification does not show the photo itself, which makes the user engage further with the app.

00:35:00

Cell Phone Safe

The mom decides to lock the family's cell phones in the Kitchen Safe Time Locking Container for 1 hour while they are eating dinner. After a few minutes, Isla leaves the dinner table to smash open the safe in order to get her phone. Ben's phone screen gets smashed in the process and he blames Cassandra for making their mom paranoid that they are on their phones too much. His mom then challenges him to put his phone away for an entire week in exchange for a new screen.

00:41:30

Isla Cries

Isla cries after looking at her phone an examining herself in the mirror. The movie explains how social media is affecting teenage girls and includes that the whole generation is more anxious, more fragile, more depressed, etc.

00:50:20

Ben Uses His Phone

Ben decided to check his phone one night before the week challenge is over. He finds that his ex-girlfriend is now in another relationship. He is now hooked back into using his phone. The people "inside" of his phone are working extra hard to now keep him engaged after his hiatus. They begin showing Ben new content that he spends all night looking at.

01:01:20

Pizzagate

The interviewees discuss "pizzagate", a concept spread through the media that ordering a pizza meant ordering a trafficked person. Facebook's recommended engine targeted users that had indicated that they believed in conspiracy theories, and recommended that they joined the pizzagate group. This resulted in a man pulling a gun at a pizza place while trying to "free" the trafficked children that weren't there.

01:03:30

Ben Watches Conspiracy Theories

Ben is encapsulated by extreme center political content that is all over his social media. He is too preocupied by reading what on his social media that he stops going to soccer practice and is completly disengaged from the people around him.

01:13:30

Extremist Protest

Ben attends an extreme center protest. Cassandra spots him as she is driving by and when she goes into the protest to get him they both get arrested.

01:26:00

The Ending

The movie concludes with the interviewees stating that as the people who built these things, they now have the resposibility to change them. In order to have a healthy society we need to demand that these products be designed humanely with the intention to make the world better.