podcast
Terms of Service with Clare Duffy
New technologies like artificial intelligence, facial recognition and social media algorithms are changing our world so fast that it can be hard to keep up. This cutting-edge tech often inspires overblown hype — and fear. That’s where we come in. Each week, CNN Tech Writer Clare Duffy will break down how these technologies work and what they’ll mean for your life in terms that don’t require an engineering degree to understand. And we’ll empower you to start experimenting with these tools, without getting played by them.
Is Social Media Changing How We Live Offline, Too?
Terms of Service with Clare Duffy
Jul 28, 2026
Social media isn't just online anymore, it's starting to dictate how we live offline, too. Writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton asked Americans how what they see on their screens is shaping all kinds of life choices. Her new book is out August 4th.
Terms of Service is a CNN Podcasts and Goat Rodeo production. This episode was produced by Hazel Hoffman. At Goat Rodeo, the lead producer is Rebecca Seidel, and the executive producers are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright. At CNN, Dan Bloom is our Senior Producer and Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. Production support from Sofía Sanchez.
Episode Transcript
Clare Duffy
00:00:01
'Scrolling through Facebook or Instagram can feel like going through a highlight reel of other people's lives. Picture-perfect weddings and birthday parties, gorgeous vacations, professional milestones. It can be nice to celebrate all of these things, but scrolling through them can also bring up complicated feelings of comparison and self-judgment. It's also just kind of weird if you step back and think about how normal it is now that you can know what the girl you haven't spoken to since high school's kid ate for breakfast this morning. Social media has reshaped how we share our lives with the world, so much so that it almost feels inescapable. More than ever, algorithms are changing what we decide to share and how. Writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton decided to dig into this. She talked to people all over the country about how social media has changed what they decide to post and how they live. Her new book is called 'The Story of Your Life, How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything.' We'll talk about what she found, and whether we should all be rethinking how we post. This is Terms of Service. I'm CNN Tech reporter Clare Duffy. My conversation with Kathryn after this short break.
Clare Duffy
00:01:15
Social media has become such a main character in all of our lives, in ways that maybe we don't always want to admit. What made you want to dig in and sort of explore our social media behavior?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:01:27
I think that I had this feeling that we were all doing something together publicly and not talking about what it was that we we're really doing. And it was beginning to feel as though we had been engaging in this public activity about which there was no discussion for so long that, like, I needed to just, sort of, stop and say, like, no, really, what have we been doing all this time? Yeah, it was really just that. And no one had ever talked to me about what they're thinking about when they're posting. And that's what I wanted to go out and find people and talk to them about.
Clare Duffy
00:02:00
Yeah, it is interesting. It feels almost like a dirty habit. So much of the time, it's like, oh, this is kind of gross and kind of performative and kind like, well, I spend so much time on this thing. And yet it is something we are all doing so much of the time.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:02:13
'Yeah, it's both very intimate and private and even shame-inducing, and then also for public consumption. So there's something very, to me, there's very fascinating about that kind of duality.
Clare Duffy
00:02:24
Right. So you write in your book that you have been a social media user since its earliest days. You were on Friendster when you were in college. How have you seen the design of social media change since those days in the early 2000s?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:02:38
The first 10 years was really, social media was built to connect friends and people really were having a lot of fun with novel opportunities to create groups and name the groups funny things and define fandoms and you know it was really about kind of expressing your identity for an audience of people who you might conceivably know and I think people found it really just just very entertaining and like, you know, to use like a Gen Z type of. Where, like, it was very pure. People were just, like, having a good time sort of embroidering their identity for other people to see. And then, I would say around 2012, maybe a little later, there was basically the introduction of like new kinds of algorithms, the end of a chronological feed, the introduction of like, new levels of advertising, new levels data collection, leading to better, more targeted ads. And we started to see people and ads and influencers kind of all jostling for attention. And I think that kind of introduction of competition between those three types of users really changed the quality right around, I'm going to say, yeah, 2012.
Clare Duffy
00:03:50
How has that changed how we post on social media and the way that we kind of present ourselves to the world?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:03:57
'Well, I think that over time, when our posts started showing up alongside ads and mixed up with influencers, and as the algorithm began to privilege certain content over others, we just learned, we internalized the algorithm's priorities, and we just started creating content that was more in line with a kind of attention-grabbing quality, because we wanted people to see what we posted, and we also saw influencer and ad posts that work. In the process of influencing each other, mimicking each other. And so we just started mimicking as well. And I think all of this is very natural and instinctive. You know, an influencer is posting great vacation shots and people are thinking, well, gee, like, I want to do that, I could do that. Wouldn't it be cool if I did a shot like that? And then they do and their friends are like, oh my God, that looks so good. And so it just kind of goes from there. But the thing that we were trying to replicate was basically branded content.
Clare Duffy
00:04:57
'Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it sort of like gets to this what's at the heart of your book, which is about how we tell stories. And that in sort of the same way has always evolved and has, you know, people mimic different styles of storytelling. And it's just almost happening like at warp speed now on social media because things change so quickly.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:05:17
'Look at the oral tradition like Homer and, you know, epic poetry. There were many people who were reciting poems for groups of people who would sit and listen to them and because these poems had to be memorized. You know, people use certain kinds of meter in order to make it easier to remember the words and people became accustomed to sitting and listening for long periods of time. And it's not just, like, oh our attention spans are shot. Like, yes, but also, those stories were by their very nature kind of open-ended and subject to, like, endless kind of shifting and changing and the listeners became accustomed to the fact that, you know, any- this character could undergo any kind of changes because that was the format and the medium of the way that people were telling stories they were improvising they were making it up they were, you know, adding a new ending. And social media has a very sort of rigid set of rules around how long this story can be. How long we expect people to be paying attention to our story. And so we adjust our stories to kind of fit the container and the container is very, very, at this point, very small.
Clare Duffy
00:06:24
Yeah. Well, and social media so often wants you to be one thing. Like I see this now in my feed all of the time because of where I'm at in life, where, you know, an influencer that I followed because they're a food person has a baby and then people are pissed because they've started posting about motherhood. And it's like, no, we are multifaceted beings, but people want you to kind of be in your box.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:06:43
Yeah, I mean, that's a perfect example, the kind of anxiety that people experience when their brand changes because they grow older and their life changes. And I think for a lot of people, it compels them to leave social media altogether. Like, a lot of people are just like, I can't post anymore because people don't understand the life that I'm living, or maybe they're going to think that I am trending downwards. I'm failing and I can talk about that. And so, as a result, we lose all of these stories about real life that just are hard to contain within the format. And we only get these very consistent narratives. I mean, not only, but largely. And so that, our sort of reaction to the medium further kind of perpetuates this real tight container.
Clare Duffy
00:07:26
Obviously, there are people who are, we talk a lot about social media as a highlight reel, people kind of tailor what they're going to share to what they think is going to work in that space. But do you also see it going the other way, sort of, the expectations around what is going to perform well on social media actually impacting people's everyday lives?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:07:46
'I do. I think when I spoke to people in this book, it was really clear that they had internalized what does well. And they kind of knew, they had a sense, a running sense of their own content and how it performs. As though they were like a social media manager for a brand. You know, people were saying, you know, after this happened, after this event in my life, you know, my engagement really went down and I had to wonder why that was. And, you know, when I post pictures like this, I tend to, you know, get more whatever. And this is just natural, but it's also the affordances of social media, the fact that we're given metrics that, you know, we're fed little, little details about how our content does, which people inevitably are interested in and then kind of have a little tally in their minds about it. So yeah, it does, it compels us to act in a kind of a brand-managerial way.
Clare Duffy
00:08:34
Yeah. People, like, picking where they're going to go on vacation because of what's, to your point, like, what's going to look nice?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:08:40
Yeah, I mean, even if you took away the metrics, I think it would make a real difference. If people had no idea how their content was doing, I think we would see a change. People would just kind of start posting things slightly differently because there would be no way of seeing the rewards.
Clare Duffy
00:08:55
Yeah. You mentioned, in the reporting for your book, you talked to people all over the country about their social media use. Are there stories that stand out from that or things that really surprised you from those conversations?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:09:06
One woman was talking to me about the way that she decorates her home and the way she wants it to look and her, kind of, relationship to social media and kind of the environment of home. And she wants it to look a certain way, she wants it to, sort of, say something about her, about her values, and I think to show the world that she's done well in a certain ways. And then she said, you know, when I was 18, I bought my first house. And I got out of the trailer that I grew up in, and it was like really big for me to kind of emancipate myself from my parents. So I owned this house and I lived there for 10 years. And for the duration of those 10 years, I didn't masturbate one time. I was like completely not expecting this.
Clare Duffy
00:09:50
It's like, what?
00:09:51
This is not, we weren't, this isn't like the direction we were going.
Clare Duffy
00:09:53
Uh huh.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:09:53
And she was like, you know, it was because I felt that living in that house and keeping that house the way I wanted it to look was. If I were to even slip up in any way, like if God saw me, or some kind of higher organizing authority saw me in any ways slipping, everything could be taken away from me. And I think that, you know, this doesn't seem like it's obviously about social media, but she was, I think, responding to the sort of disciplinary nature of the way we start to see, you make your house look a certain way, you makes your vacation look a certain way. You make your family look a certain way it's all work and it starts to seem necessary and important because it does feel as though if you fail to create that proper representation, have you failed as a person? How can you say you've succeeded? And I think it does kind of dovetail into people's economic anxieties, their feeling of precariousness in the world.
Clare Duffy
00:10:52
What do you think we gain from telling our stories on social media? Obviously, there are these sort of challenges that it presents. But storytelling, as you said, has been an important part of our history.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:11:03
Yeah. I mean, I think we're desperate to tell stories. And so, we'll use whatever medium we're given, even if it's really, you know, slip shot and not working anymore. So, I think that sharing is something that we love doing and we love telling our friends about what we're up to. And we love seeing what our friends are doing. And I think it's the, kind of, original spirit of social media. We still kind of have that in that, yeah, we just love and we're all so nosy and we want to spy on people and keep track of like, our former exes and all of this stuff, like, we're social, we're a social species. So this just gives us an opportunity to indulge in our deep sociality. It's just that the way the platforms are now set up, it's not really optimized for that anymore.
Clare Duffy
00:11:51
How do you see this all connecting to this sort of trend that we're seeing of, like, culture flattening and people starting to look the same and dress the same and make their houses look the the same?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:12:02
Yeah.
Clare Duffy
00:12:03
That feels very connected, here.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:12:06
'It's totally connected. I mean, yeah, people- home decor, clothing, obviously, vacations, celebrations, weddings, all of these kind of things that are markers of happiness and joy and togetherness do start to resemble each other because they're being produced to be consumed in a particular, on a particular medium.
Clare Duffy
00:12:26
And it feels unfortunate in a lot of ways, like, as we talk about storytelling and telling the true story of who we are versus, like, trying to fit in with the story that we think we should be telling. What do we lose there?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:12:37
Yeah, I think there are moments where there really is something lost. Like I think about a wedding, which is really like a very kind of emotional moment in a person's life. And it is an opportunity to really sort of feel what came before and what's coming ahead. And also, these are the kinds of gatherings we've been having for our entire species history. And it's become, I mean, I don't know how many weddings you've been to recently, but they're like trade shows for the gig economy.
Clare Duffy
00:13:04
Yes.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:13:04
Like, you know, the band is creating content. The caterer is like, please, like, tag me. And it is like yeah, if could, could we have this be private? Like that's, it's the idea that that would be an awkward request is significant, right?
Clare Duffy
00:13:21
Yeah. When we come back, is it time to start being more real in our social media posts? Or maybe just pull back from posting altogether? Plus, Kathryn shares why despite everything we're talking about, she still loves social media. That's after the break.
Clare Duffy
00:13:39
'And we're back. Kathryn pointed out something we've all probably noticed on social media: people tend to tell stories in really black and white ways. They'll say an experience was amazing or life-changing or horrible with little room for any kind of gray area. And she says this can be harmful for younger people especially, as they use social media to try to understand their own lives.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:14:03
'So, if we're not hearing nuanced stories, and I'm thinking about younger people, I'm think about like, you know, Gen Alpha and Gen Z, who are growing up, and they're only hearing about certain kinds of life experiences through social media because that's where they're getting most of their information. It's like a reduction of capacity. They're not, like, having examples that they can use to make their own stories that contain, like, ambivalence or, you know, kind of, almost impossible-to-express but ultimately worth trying-to-express feelings, right? It's like, oh, it was awesome, we were killing it, it was fire, we had the best time ever, last night was a movie, like, whatever.
Clare Duffy
00:14:43
Even when people try to express that nuance, it's often in sort of a performative way, like, oh no, this was really hard for me. Let me tell you, I've grown a lot through this thing or whatever it is.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:14:54
I mean, well, there you go. Usually if there is a moment of struggle, we metabolize it as an opportunity for growth and turn it into a kind of a triumphant narrative. When, so often, I can say this at my like big age in life, you struggle and you're like that, that was just hard.
Clare Duffy
00:15:12
Yeah.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:15:12
It'll be a while before I'm able to like have a takeaway from that or maybe never.
Clare Duffy
00:15:18
Mmm hmm. That just sucked.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:15:18
Maybe I just had a bad time and it sucked. So, you know, that's a way that life happens and I think that kind of storytelling is kind of pushed to the side a little bit in this platform.
Clare Duffy
00:15:30
Are there other ways in which you see sort of us as consumers being impacted by how we consume these stories on social media, not just how we tell our story, but what it means for us to be receiving other people's stories in this way?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:15:44
Yeah, I think it's really disheartening. I think it is a, like a source of sort of malaise that we don't even realize is because of this. I thin Gen Z being a little bit, I don't want to say nihilistic, but I have kids who are 15 and 12 and they kind of consider most stories to be like fundamentally sort of 'sus.' They kind of know like people are bullshitting. Like this is all, this is all fake, but, like, you need to have something to be excited about.
Clare Duffy
00:16:17
Right.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:16:18
You need to have something to aspire to in terms of a story. And I think they're, it's curdled for them a little bit, social media. And they use it for fun, but they don't see versions of life that they want to emulate.
Clare Duffy
00:16:32
That's scary, the thought that social media is kind of fundamentally changing us as humans.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:16:38
I mean, I really think that we're approaching the end of the posting era.
Clare Duffy
00:16:42
Mm. Yeah, I was going to ask.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:16:44
Yeah. I think it's not long for this world. I mean, people are posting less for sure. This has, like, been widely observed. And I don't know what comes next because we're going to need a storytelling medium. We will create one, but I don't think that making posts on social media is going to be it for very much longer.
Clare Duffy
00:17:05
Did you hear that in your conversations? People starting to question or talking about pulling back?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:17:12
A lot of people said that they'd hardly post anymore, but they still look at it all the time. Everyone who I spoke to who had pulled back said, listen, it's not that I'm not on Instagram every day, it's just that I am not posting because I feel weird about posting. So I think there's going to be a period of time where we're looking at stuff and we're going to recognize it less and less and it's going to represent something that's not us.
Clare Duffy
00:17:35
Interesting. Yeah, it also feels like the world is so weird right now. I hear this all the time and I feel this myself, like the word is so and f'd up. And it's like, well, I don't want to post about my vacation when look at this thing that's happening over here.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:17:47
Yeah, that's definitely part of the story. People are like, I can't, how do I fit into this whole feed, I don't, there's no place for me there.
Clare Duffy
00:17:55
You say, in your book, that despite all of this, you love social media. Why?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:18:01
I love memes, like the whole, I would say like the glimmer of hope that I have is that people are still being funny on social media and that doesn't feel like it's going away. So I love the creativity that people manage. Like people are always kind of escaping containment by the medium and coming up with new ways to use it. So, I mean, that's fun for me, but that's not telling the story of your life. So it's just a separate thing.
Clare Duffy
00:18:31
Oh, that's interesting. I was going to ask, do you have tips for people about how to continue to get the benefits that you talk about from social media while being aware of these pitfalls?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:18:41
I mean, 'close friends' is cool. You know, like putting stuff on close friends is kind of the best you can do. But even that is not always so satisfying. I think for most people, that's kind of like the sight of like a kind of feeling of togetherness or like being seen.
Clare Duffy
00:19:01
Yeah. What do your social media habits look like these days?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:19:05
I delete Instagram from my phone, I would say like five days out of the week. I have to, because otherwise I look at it too much.
Clare Duffy
00:19:12
Yeah.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:19:12
And then I, you know, I use it. I really love when it's on my phone, because then I get, I've set it up as a little treat type thing.
Clare Duffy
00:19:22
What days, what days are your Instagram days?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:19:24
Usually, like, Friday/Saturday.
Clare Duffy
00:19:27
OK.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:19:27
But then often, like, for example, what day is today? It's on there now. So, you, know, it's, I'm not perfect. I post to 'close friends' about my real life. And then, I mean, I use it from my work, I'm a person who posts for my job. And that's like, you know, I've got to do it, it's fine, I don't resent that.
Clare Duffy
00:19:48
I think my question is like, do we try to fix this? Do we accept that the posting era is over and continue on this path or stop sharing? Or should we all try to be sharing more of the boring or bad parts of our lives and be more real? Or are we past that?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:20:02
'I don't think that there's a way that we can enact a new culture of posting. Because, also, the people- it's one thing if you're, like, living in a coastal city and you're in the media and you're talking about this stuff all the time, the people that I was talking to in this book live, you know, in other parts of the country, far away from the coasts. And they love talking about this, but they, and they know there's something uncomfortable about it. But most people I don't think are interested in you know, a kind of a critical new version of discourse. So I think it's going to be a slow fade out and something else is going to come. I don't think that this is a fixable medium for us. I don't, and I'm sad to say that I wish I had like a cool proposal for us all, but I don't
Clare Duffy
00:20:55
Do you think it's important for us to invest in memorializing our lives in other ways, offline ways?
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:21:01
I do. Yes. And I think a lot of people are doing that. People, I mean, digital cameras, making photo albums, like creating collages, like having, doing stuff together with our hands is something that I think a lot people are more and more, partly because they don't want to be on their phones. And I thinnk that that's really important and people take so much pleasure out of that. So, yeah, I think honestly, the family album is like an incredible medium. Sharing a family album with someone sitting on a couch side by side, turning the pages. Like, that's the experience that I think we want to have on some level on Instagram, that we can never have again, and kind of saying like, oh, this is, you know, narrating the thing and being like, Oh, my God, remember this. I mean, there's so much pleasure in that act.
Clare Duffy
00:21:51
Yeah.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:21:51
We haven't like lost that. It's still available to us. It's kind of annoying to get your photos printed.
Clare Duffy
00:21:56
Yes.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:21:56
'But you know, maybe we could find. If some disruptor wants to re-enter the space and make photo printing really easy and accessible and high quality and affordable, there's money in that, I believe.
Clare Duffy
00:22:10
I love it. You brought up your kids. Do you talk to your kids about this? Do you like, I'm curious how they sort of see this and where it's going.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:22:21
Yeah. We do. I mean, my kids, I've really said like, you can't have Instagram.
Clare Duffy
00:22:24
'Mm-hmm. Yes.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:22:25
'You're not allowed and they have- my older son has Snapchat and it's because that's how they communicate with each other.
Clare Duffy
00:22:29
That's how they talk, yeah.
00:22:30
'They're very ambivalent about the sharing of pictures. They don't like me sharing pictures of them on my main feed and then, like, or it has to be consent only. And a lot of kids are like that and I really respect that kind of protective orientation. They see, I mean, I'm a cringe millennial to them. Like, everything I do is super lame, so, like, when they see photos that I post and I'll show them- they know that I have, like, certain friends who post a lot of photos and they love to look and be like, Oh, look at that. But to them, it's like all just impossibly stupid. And they like, we see exactly what you're doing. And it's all a little sad. I wonder what they're going to do. I have no idea what their version will be, you know, in 10, 15 years.
Clare Duffy
00:23:15
Well, Kathryn, thank you so much. This is such an interesting conversation, and congratulations on your book. I'm excited for everybody to get to read it.
'Kathryn Jezer-Morton
00:23:23
Thank you so much for having me.
Clare Duffy
00:23:26
'Thanks again to Kathryn Jezer-Morton. Her book comes out on August 4. Kathryn's book and this conversation have given me a lot to think about when I open social media apps now. Once you start considering how algorithms shape what we post and how we operate in our offline lives, it's hard not to think about it. Maybe a little more of that awareness is what all of us need. That and just spending more time outside touching grass. Whether or not you are someone who posts a lot, it's worth thinking about how you're shaping your own story for the world. That's it for this week's episode of Terms of Service. I'm Clare Duffy. Talk to you next week.