The Story of Your Life

"A thought-provoking analysis on what exactly we're doing with all our many hours of screen time." -Harper's Bazaar An eye-opening look at how social media shapes the stories we tell and the lives we lead Over the past two decades, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have revolutionized how we document and share our lives. We once archived our experiences in photo albums, and now we capture our most significant moments in reels and photo dumps. Whether we prefer to admit it or not, social media is where our history lives now. In The Story of Your Life, journalist and New York magazine columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton examines how these algorithm-driven platforms not only change the way we share information but also shape the content itself. What stories do we choose to tell, and how do these choices reflect and shape our evolving identities? Through rigorous research and intimate interviews with everyday people, Jezer-Morton explores how the platforms on which we have told our life stories for the past twenty years have determined what those stories have come to look and sound like. Today our attention spans are short, and our stories reflect that, with spectacle and exaggeration playing ever-larger roles in our accounts of everyday life. By examining how we share, talk, and post about our milestones, vacations, homes, relationships, hardships, politics, and more, Jezer-Morton shows just how pervasive and influential our social media platforms have become in how we view ourselves and what we consider to be a life well lived. Smart, funny, and sharply observant, The Story of Your Life delivers an original and revealing look at our lives online and off and offers us a fresh perspective on the ways social media shapes the very arcs of our lives.

Kathryn Jezer-Morton is the author of the biweekly Brooding column at The Cut, in which she explores topics surrounding modern family life. She has written about domestic life and digital culture for The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, and Jezebel, among many other publications. She holds a PhD in sociology from Concordia University and lives with her family in Montreal.