We might think we understand our own social-media habits, but most of us would come up short if asked to explain why we post the way we do. Posting happens in private, almost without thinking, yet it is never trivial: everything we share carries a set of values, often more aspirational than true to life. Why can’t we just be honest?

In The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, Kathryn Jezer-Morton, Ph.D., the author of the biweekly “Brooding” column at The Cut, sets out to answer that question. For two decades she has been trying to make sense of what we are doing online, and here she examines what shifted around the turn of the millennium, when ordinary people began seeing themselves as brands. She traveled across the United States to interview everyday people about their social-media lives, asking them things they had never been asked, and pairs those conversations with her own experience to show how algorithm-driven platforms reshape not only how we share but what we share.

The result is neither technophobic nor moralizing. It is an emotion-led study of the way we present ourselves online, from baby bumps to political performance to vacation photos, that asks whether the flattening pull of social media does justice to the rich narratives we each carry.

Jezer-Morton will be in conversation with Jia Tolentino, an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the acclaimed essay collection Trick Mirror.