The Patron Saint of Social Media

An incredible amount of energy goes into curating our online personas. Kim Kardashian, the patron-saint of social media, once said she “needed” about 1,200 selfies per day in order to get the good ones that she could post online.

She’s an extreme example, to be sure, but she shines light on the promise of social media: the chance to carefully edit and display the best version of ourselves to the world. The result is that people increasingly prefer online interaction to face-to-face. We can display a version of ourselves that, if not better looking, may be more witty, smart, generous,…