In the summer of 1945, the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated in the high desert of New Mexico. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the team that researched and developed the bomb, famously remarked that the detonation brought to his mind a line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Oppenheimer’s lament has been integrated into the romantic self-image of today’s technologists, making the archetype of the Promethean inventor whose contribution dooms the world every bit as seductive as the one who delivers progress. It’s not surprising then that of all the people who’ve helped create the contemporary social media juggernaut, a few have apostatized, left their jobs at Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and openly reinvented themselves as tech-dystopian Cassandras. Netflix’s documentary The Social Dilemma revolves around the perspectives of these defectors.

Because it’s true that social media has injurious consequences, The Social Dilemma makes some welcome points with ease. It’s at its best when assessing the extent of the psychological damage. Fine-tuned by developers trained in the art of persuasive technology, social media platforms hijack the evolutionary features of the human brain. We’re meant to recognize ourselves in our reflection or by name, but not dozens or hundreds of times a day. We’re meant to care about whether we’re liked and accepted by our clan, but that clan isn’t supposed to be comprised of infinite strangers.