Convivial Social Media Selves?

Abstract

Computers were destined to be “connected” because their creators were created to be “connected.” While sociologists attempt to examine the self in relation to the phenomena of ever-connected social media platforms, theological insight can provide a transcendent teleology, a “directionality,” toward which such connectedness points. This essay draws on Ivan Illich’s vision for “convivial tools” for an interdisciplinary examination of the self in context of social media. Commercially designed, corporate-controlled social media platforms are not convivial tools by Illich’s definition, and cannot patch all existential wounds, but they can synthetically ameliorate the deepest longings of the human heart. Ultimately, social media selves hearken to a spiritual vision of a world where such alienation and brokenness are supplanted by personal and relational wholeness.