Human Connection and Social Media Theme Analysis

At the start of the novel, Death-Cast (a system that alerts people 24 hours before they’re going to die) has been in operation for about six years. Two years before the novel begins, the app Last Friend debuted. Last Friend is one of many apps and social media platforms that developers created to serve the Deckers (people who know they’re going to die) and others who are interested in and want to connect with Deckers on some level. In addition to this platform, there are also hookup apps, livestreaming sites, and more sinister endeavors that cater to Deckers—including an app that monetarily rewards the families of Deckers who commit suicide in “creative” ways. Through these apps and platforms, people are able to connect in new and unique ways—and in some cases, move their connections offline. Mateo and Rufus, who share the same End Day (the day they know they’ll die), connect with each other on Last Friend. They also connect with strangers on social media platforms like Instagram and with people in person over the course of their day’s activities, all of which forces them to engage with questions about the role of social media in fostering human connection. While both boys do, to varying degrees, take issue with the prevalence of social media in their lives and in the lives of Deckers more generally, they nevertheless come to the same conclusion: that social media is a tool which enables people to connect to others in meaningful ways, but it’s not a substitute for human connection.

Mateo is a shy and anxiety-ridden teen, which means that he has few meaningful in-person relationships. He has his best friend, Lidia, and her one-year-old daughter, Penny, as well as his father—but Dad is in a coma in the hospital. The only other living people whom Mateo mentions by name are his neighbors, who have been checking in on him since Dad’s hospitalization two weeks before the novel begins. Mateo connects with other people most often through social media, specifically through the CountDowners platform. The fictional CountDowners, unlike social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram that also appear in the novel, is unique in that it allows Deckers to livestream their End Days. It maybe a way to connect, but those streaming are exclusively people who are going to die. In this sense, Mateo may be connecting to others by bearing witness to people’s final days, but none of these connections are lasting ones—the connections end when the Decker dies. Importantly, Mateo recognizes the limits of only connecting to people this way; this is why he downloads Last Friend in the first place. Though he frames downloading Last Friend as a way for him to break out of his shell and do things he wouldn’t normally do, it also suggests that he understands the power of forming intimate, in-person connections with people.

Lidia complicates Mateo’s understanding of how he uses social media. Lidia thinks that while Mateo’s Facebook profile may not be the best record of Mateo’s life since he doesn’t post much, it nevertheless tells an important story about the kind of person Mateo is: most of his activity entails posting kind messages on other people’s photos and status updates. In other words, though Mateo isn’t the sort of social media user who consistently keeps followers updated on his every move, he nevertheless uses social media to make people he cares about feel loved, heard, and seen. Among Rufus and his friend group, the Plutos, it’s also impossible to ignore the role that social media plays in their relationships. They text one another constantly in addition to posting on one another’s Instagram accounts. Connecting online is one of the many ways the Plutos demonstrate that they’re there for one another, that they’re listening, and that they love one another. But as with Mateo’s Facebook presence, the Plutos’ social media relationships are an extension of their in-person relationships, not a substitute for them. Even among established friend groups, then, the novel shows that social media is still only one aspect of a healthy friendship.

Despite this, the novel does imply that once a friend is gone, social media takes on a slightly different role: that of a photo album or memory book of sorts. Rufus documents his End Day on Instagram in part so that his friends will be able to see how he lived it, but he also understands that he’s giving his friends more ways to remember him. His photos—some staged, some candid—are going to be some of the only things his friends have left of him after he’s gone. Lidia, too, focuses on the idea that she’ll be able to remember Mateo through the social media presence he did have, even if it might not have been particularly robust.

Though Mateo and Rufus come to Last Friend for different reasons—Mateo to break out of his shell; Rufus because the Plutos end up in jail and can’t take his calls—they both discover the same thing: that connecting intimately with another person in real life is fulfilling in a way that just connecting online isn’t. For Mateo, meeting Rufus is especially meaningful: Mateo spends nearly all of the novel hiding his sexuality, even from the reader—but he eventually comes out as gay, kisses Rufus, and spends his last hours with the person he loves. As the new couple discusses the way they met, Rufus admits that he wishes they could’ve connected earlier, without the help of a “stupid app.” Mateo, however, puts his finger on the thing that social media apps like Last Friend, Facebook, and Instagram do really well: he suggests that “the app puts you out there more than anything else. For me, it meant admitting I was lonely and wanted to connect with someone.” That is, while human connection may be something that all people desire, it takes acknowledging that desire to be able to follow through and reach out. Social media, for all its faults, forces people to do this and adds meaning to people’s lives—even if their lives, as within the world of the novel, will soon be cut short.