Scrolling through my Instagram feed recently, I was transported to a world far beyond the borders of the Appalachian Mountains where I live.

In one photo, a group of refugees and migrants waited hunchbacked at the U.S. border in Yuma, Arizona. In their hands, they held few possessions, lifetimes reduced to knapsacks. In another image, one exhausted-looking father clutches his young, sleeping daughter. Her infant eyes are oblivious to the desperate men and women around her.

As I continue to browse through my feed, the algorithm feeds me even more. A reel of a Mumbai street vendor, quick and confident, serves up a dish I’ve never heard of. A photo story of a disabled mother in Colombia shows the woman using her feet to comb her school-aged son’s hair.

Thanks to a geography course in seventh grade, I can point on a map to the places I’m now seeing in my Instagram feed. I know all about cardinal directions; latitude and longitude; how to read a map key. And now, thanks to social media, these cities, countries and continents seem even more real to me.

But as I survey these scenes from lives opposite mine, I’m struck by a few thoughts...

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