“Where we once justified our daily anxieties by doom scrolling through bad news, we now post memes that epitomise our sense of mass existentialism, taking part in a sort of performative negativity that, as a result, protects us against reality,” says Holly Friend, deputy foresight editor at futures consultancy, The Future Laboratory.

With Instagram there was the idea that my life is constantly available for perception and evaluation by other people. I had these thoughts: I’d upload a photo and then I’d view my Instagram story and try to pretend to be somebody else—a stranger—and imagine how they’d see me. I’d be trying to present myself to be legible in a certain way to complet... See more