But here’s what I’m wondering: does Facebook make self-narration less compelling, less necessary? In a much talked-about essay, Peggy Orenstein has speculated that Facebook denies to young people “an opportunity for insight, for growth through loneliness”; it makes it harder for them “to establish distance from their former selves, to clear space for introspection and transformation.” Maybe it also eases — or hides from us — our displacements, and creates a false sense of seamlessness in lives that have actually undergone significant ruptures.

Fantastic. So after a decade-plus of Bowling Alone-style arguments about how technology alienates us from other human beings and dooms us to a life of lonely disengagement, now come the arguments that technology makes solitude impossible and dooms us to a life of hyper-connected group-think.