During the past decade or so, since the invention of the smartphone and social media, and the confessional culture they have created, we have gained a great deal of knowledge about how people—teenagers and young adults, mostly—create “Instagrammable” lives for themselves. That is, they say and do things, including sharing intensely personal information, to construct an image of a life that strikes their peers—whether they know them personally or not—as appealing, as desirable. They live for the approval of others, represented by Likes on Facebook, or other tokens of affirmation.
