“Kathryn Jezer-Morton is invaluable: one of our greatest chroniclers of the norms of American domestic life, one of our most astute interpreters of performance and gloss. The Story of Your Life is an essential study of the ordinary use of social media—it’s poignant and easygoing and never preachy, and crucially, it’s focused on people who exist outside over-dissected coastal norms. Jezer-Morton is utterly free of defensive postures and self-righteousness, averse to the cynicism about others and false innocence about the self that defines so much of the internet—yet she’s always a sharp, generous critic of these very things. This book is a classic in the critical project of relating surface to structure, and a milestone work on what’s lost when our narrative imagination is disciplined into a rigid, optimized, phone-shaped norm.” —Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror

“Whenever I want to think more carefully about something in my online world that annoys or fascinates me, I go to Kathryn Jezer-Morton. She's a trenchant analyst who's also a nuance queen—and The Story of Your Life is Jezer-Morton operating at the height of her (tremendous) powers.” —Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even

“An unexpectedly moving look at how algorithmic social platforms shape not just our tastes but our capacity to discern and process our own experiences, and imagine the boundaries of our possible futures. The Story of Your Life manages to both alarm and reassure, exposing social media’s power over us while reminding us that storytelling—the medium humans have always relied on for survival—is endlessly resilient.” —Kyle Chayka, author of The Longing for Less and Filterworld

“Breezily inquisitive. . . . Jezer-Morton offers long, beautiful passages on ambivalence, one of the shady human emotions that social media—with its bright performative hits, its ‘journeys’ and its insistence on redemption—fails to capture. Her book is hopeful and unscolding. It will make you think twice about putting in the extra work on vacation to show your Close Friends just how happy and relaxed you are.” —The New York Times

“A thought-provoking analysis on what exactly we’re doing with all our many hours of screen time.” —Harper’s Bazaar

“A shrewd analysis of how social media has restricted the stories people tell about themselves and others. . . . The author balances her account with humor . . . she offers incisive critiques, most notably about the hidden economic power at work; these ‘tales of resilience and triumph,’ she explains, function to hide increasing economic disparity: ‘We are telling these stories as proof that we can thrive in an economic order that has largely left ordinary people behind.’ It’s a thought-provoking interrogation of what goes unposted and why.”—Publishers Weekly

“Smart, sharply observed analysis. . . . This fascinating portrait of social media is essential for understanding how tech companies shape how we share, talk about, and make sense of our own lives. A lively, irreverent journey.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Compelling. . . . Jezer-Morton's work is well researched and thoughtful, exploring the often negative influence of social networking sites on human behaviour. This is a timely book that is a must-read for our online world.” —Booklist

“Jezer-Morton smartly combines the personal with the political in this analysis of social media—part memoir, part ethnography and part speculation. . . . A compelling, accessible synthesis of philosophy and personal narrative, exploring how users conform to social media’s logic, which encourages the flattening of nuance, whimsy and the understanding of a good life.”
—Library Journal

“[Jezer-Morton] draws on research and interviews to make the case that platforms like Instagram and TikTok haven’t just shaped how we tell our life stories over the past two decades, they’ve also determined which moments we choose to record, share, and remember.” —The Globe and Mail

“The Story of Your Life traverses the various facets of life that have become fodder for posting, including chapters on celebration, struggles, home and grievance. . . . Jezer-Morton does a good job of not retreading predictable ground and her more measured read on the values and drawbacks of social media is reassuring. She is a staunch defender of the merit of storytelling while remaining clear-eyed about the fact that we’ve still yet to find a viable replacement storytelling mechanism.” —Chicago Review of Books