Sartre's Existentialism in the Digital Age: Freedom and

Your phone alarm goes off at seven in the morning. Before you even open your eyes, you’ve already checked three notifications, scrolled through your Instagram feed, and replied to a work message. You decide what to have for breakfast from fourteen options on an app menu, pick your clothes with the virtual meeting in mind, and by nine o’clock you’ve made more decisions than a medieval peasant made in an entire week. But did you really choose? Are you free? Or, more unsettling still: is it really you who is living your life?

These questions, far from being idle intellectual exercises, take us straight to the heart of Sartrean existentialism. Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher who popularized existentialism in postwar Europe, declared more than seventy years ago that we are “condemned to be free.” In an era where algorithms predict our desires, social media shape our identities and anxiety has become the silent pandemic of the 21st century, the question isn’t merely academic: is Sartre still relevant?

Existentialism in Its Original Context: Freedom Among the Ruins

To grasp the current relevance of Sartrean existentialism, we first have to place it in its time. When Sartre wrote “Being and Nothingness” (1943) and “Existentialism Is a Humanism” (1946), Europe was emerging from an unprecedented catastrophe. World War II had destroyed not only cities but certainties. The great philosophical systems, totalizing political ideologies and traditional religious structures seemed incapable of explaining—much less preventing—the horror of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and the absolute degradation of the human condition.

In this context of material and spiritual ruins, Sartre proposed something radical: there is no predefined “human nature,” no essence that determines who we must be. His famous formulation “existence precedes essence” meant that we first exist, we find ourselves thrown into the world, and only afterward, through our choices and actions, do we build what we are. There is no divine instruction manual, no immutable biological destiny, no social structure that can exempt us from the radical responsibility of inventing ourselves.

This absolute freedom came with an equally absolute burden: existential anguish. If there is nothing and no one to dictate what we should do, if every decision is entirely ours, then every consequence is too. Anguish arises when we realize that we are the sole authors of our lives, with no possibility of shifting responsibility onto God, society, our parents or biology.

Bad Faith: Self-Deception as a Strategy of Evasion

One of Sartre’s most penetrating concepts is “mauvaise foi,” or bad faith: the strategy by which we try to escape our freedom and responsibility. Bad faith consists of lying to ourselves, pretending that we are objects determined by external forces when in reality we are free subjects who are constantly choosing.

Sartre’s classic example is the waiter who plays his role with exaggerated theatricality, moving with the mechanical precision of an automaton. This waiter is in bad faith because he tries to reduce himself to his social function, denying his freedom to be something more than a waiter. He convinces himself that he “is” a waiter the way a stone “is” a stone, when in reality he is continually choosing to play that role.

Sound familiar? In the 21st century, bad faith has found new and sophisticated forms of expression. Social media offer us prefabricated roles: the motivational entrepreneur, the fitness influencer, the provocative intellectual. We obsessively curate our digital identities, building characters we then mistake for our authentic selves. We tell ourselves “this is just who I am” when we post, share or react, but we rarely ask whether we are choosing freely or simply reproducing algorithmically reinforced patterns.

The modern corporation also cultivates bad faith with mastery. “Corporate culture” invites us to identify completely with our work, to be “a true Googler” or “part of the Amazon family.” Workplace personality tests (Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, etc.) offer us prefabricated essences: “I’m an INTJ, that’s why I act this way.” All of this temporarily relieves our existential anguish, but at the price of our authenticity.

Freedom and Determinism in the Age of Big Data

The most fascinating confrontation between Sartre and our time takes place on the terrain of freedom versus determinism. The French philosopher defended a radical freedom: even in the worst circumstances, we retain the freedom to choose our attitude, to give meaning to our situation. His experience as a prisoner of war for nine months in 1940–41 reinforced this conviction: even as a captive, he chose how to interpret and respond to his captivity.

But in the 21st century we face a new kind of determinism, more subtle and perhaps more effective than any physical prison: algorithmic determinism. Tech companies hold more data about our behaviors, preferences and psychological patterns than we do ourselves. Recommendation algorithms don’t just predict what we’ll want to see, buy or do next; in many ways, they actively generate those desires through selective exposure and behavioral reinforcement.

Yuval Noah Harari has argued that we are moving from liberal humanism (where the individual is the supreme authority over their own life) to “dataism” (where algorithms know better than we do what we need). If Netflix knows better than you which show you’ll like, if Spotify predicts your mood before you can articulate it, if TikTok can keep you hypnotized for hours with a feed perfectly calibrated to your psychological vulnerabilities, where does Sartrean freedom fit in?

The existentialist answer would be that freedom doesn’t consist of being free from external influences or conditioning—that’s impossible—but rather in the awareness of that conditioning and in choosing how to respond to it. We can choose to critically examine why the algorithm shows us what it shows us, we can decide to disconnect, we can opt not to give in to the engineering of persuasion. But this freedom requires a constant effort of awareness, of what Sartre called “authenticity”: living in lucid acknowledgment of our freedom and responsibility.

Existential Anguish in Times of Collective Anxiety

If Sartre regarded anguish as the fundamental emotion of anyone who recognizes their absolute freedom, the 21st century seems to have taken him literally. Anxiety has become the most prevalent mental disorder of our time, especially among young people. According to the World Health Organization, anxiety disorders affect more than 260 million people worldwide, a figure that soared after the COVID-19 pandemic.

But is this contemporary anxiety equivalent to Sartrean existential anguish? There are crucial similarities and differences. Existential anguish arises from the vertigo of freedom: we feel anguish because we could do anything, because no choice comes guaranteed, because we are radically responsible. It is the anguish of the student who must choose a major without knowing if it’s the right one, of the professional who questions whether their work has meaning, of the person deciding whether to have children knowing that either decision is irreversible.

Modern anxiety contains this component, but amplified by factors specific to our time: option overload (the paradox of choice), constant social comparison on social media, structural economic precarity, the climate crisis casting uncertainty over the very future of the planet. We have more freedom of choice than any previous generation (at least in privileged societies), but that multiplication of options hasn’t made us freer or happier. On the contrary, it paralyzes us.

Sartrean existentialism offers us a framework for understanding this paradox: freedom without commitment, without a life project, without authentic choice, doesn’t liberate—it produces anguish. Sartre insisted that freedom must be exercised through “commitment” (engagement): choosing a project, values, a direction, and fully assuming responsibility for that choice. The authentic person isn’t the one who keeps all options open indefinitely, but the one who chooses and then lives coherently with that choice, acknowledging that they could have chosen otherwise.

Here lies a powerful critique of the contemporary culture of “keep your options open.” Dating apps offering unlimited potential partners, freelance jobs promising “total flexibility,” an education that tells us we can be whatever we want: all of this can generate not freedom but existential dispersion, an inability to commit, a fear of choosing because choosing means giving up everything else.

The Other and Relationships in the Digital Age

“Hell is other people,” Sartre wrote in his play “No Exit.” This line, often misinterpreted as a misanthropic rejection of society, actually points to something deeper: our existential dependence on the gaze of the other. According to Sartre, the other turns me into an object of their perception; they assign me qualities, judge me, define me. And I, in turn, do the same to others. This dialectic between being a subject and being-an-object-for-the-other generates constant conflict and tension.

Social media have taken this dynamic to extremes Sartre couldn’t have anticipated. We live under the gaze of hundreds or thousands of “others” simultaneously. Every post is a performative act in which we present ourselves to be judged. Likes, comments and shares become quantifiable metrics of our social worth. We build aspirational identities, display idealized versions of ourselves, and then suffer when real life doesn’t match the digital image.

This mutual hyper-objectification generates what some sociologists call “authenticity exhaustion.” We are so busy managing how others see us that we lose contact with who we are in the absence of that gaze. Sartrean authenticity—living in lucid acknowledgment of one’s freedom without bad faith—becomes almost impossible when our existence is constantly mediated by digital performance.

But Sartre also offers tools to resist this dynamic. His concept of a “common project” suggests that authentic relationships occur when two freedoms recognize each other and choose to collaborate on a shared project, without either trying to objectify or dominate the other. This is radically different from the transactional relationships typical of social media, where the other becomes a means to obtain validation, visibility or social advantage.

Existential Responsibility in Times of Structural Irresponsibility

“In choosing myself, I choose man,” Sartre declared in his 1946 lecture. Every individual decision, he argued, is also a decision about what kind of humanity we want to build. If I choose to lie, I proclaim that a world where lying is acceptable is fine. If I choose cowardice, I define the human being as a coward. This universalization of personal choice turns every act into a moral act with collective consequences.

This idea takes on particular urgency in the 21st century, where our individual decisions have measurable global impacts. The shirt I buy may be produced through slave labor in Bangladesh. The coffee I drink affects ecosystems in Colombia. My energy consumption contributes to global warming. My vote influences policies affecting millions. In the globalized digital economy, Sartrean existentialism reminds us that there are no private acts without public consequences.

Yet a tension emerges here: to what extent can we hold the individual responsible for unjust structural systems? Sartre was a Marxist as well as an existentialist, and he recognized that socioeconomic structures radically limit the concrete possibilities of freedom. A person in extreme poverty has the technical “freedom” to choose, but their real options are brutally restricted.

This tension between individual responsibility and structural determination is central to contemporary debates. Neoliberal capitalism tends to hold the individual entirely responsible (“if you’re in debt/sick/unemployed, it’s your fault”), while certain progressive currents can fall into structural determinism (“it’s all the system’s fault, the individual has no agency”). A nuanced reading of Sartre would allow us to hold both poles in productive tension: acknowledging structural limitations without completely eliminating individual responsibility, and affirming personal freedom without ignoring the material conditions that make it possible or restrict it.

Authenticity versus Self-Optimization

The contemporary imperative to “be your best self” seems, superficially, compatible with existentialism. After all, Sartre invited us to actively build ourselves through our choices. But there’s a crucial difference between the authentic existential project and the modern culture of self-optimization.

Contemporary self-optimization—fueled by the coaching, personal development and biohacking industries—tends to treat us as engineering projects. There’s an optimal version of you waiting to be reached through the right habits, the right supplements, the morning routines of billionaires. This mindset turns us into improvable objects, products in constant beta testing.

Existential authenticity, by contrast, doesn’t aspire to a predefined ideal version. There is no “optimal self” waiting to be discovered or reached, because there is no essence prior to existence. Sartrean authenticity consists of living in conscious acknowledgment that we are constantly choosing ourselves, without deceiving ourselves about our freedom or our finitude. It is more radical and more humble than self-optimization: it recognizes that there is no final goal, that existence is a permanent project, that death will necessarily interrupt that unfinished project.

This difference has practical consequences. Self-optimization generates anxiety when we fail to reach the ideal (there’s always someone more productive, healthier, more successful on Instagram). Existential authenticity, on the other hand, accepts ambiguity, failure and contingency as inalienable aspects of the human condition. It’s not about “accepting yourself as you are” (that would be bad faith, a denial of our freedom to change), but about assuming responsibility for who we choose to be, without excuses but also without impossible perfectionism.

Camusian Absurdity and the Search for Digital Meaning

Although Albert Camus rejected the “existentialist” label, his philosophy of the absurd usefully complements Sartrean existentialism for understanding our present. Camus argued that the human condition is absurd: we seek meaning in a universe that offers none. The answer is neither suicide nor illusory hope, but rebellion: to keep living passionately despite the absurd.

This sensibility resonates powerfully with the millennial and Gen Z experience. We grew up with promises of perpetual progress, of education guaranteeing decent jobs, of effort being rewarded. Instead, we found irreversible climate crisis, structural job precarity, growing inequality and dysfunctional political systems. The temptation of nihilism—“nothing matters”—is understandable.

But both Sartre and Camus rejected nihilism. If nothing has intrinsic meaning, then we are radically free to create meaning. Existentialism isn’t despair; it’s the most empowering invitation possible: you decide what matters. You don’t need to wait for the universe, God or society to tell you your purpose. You can choose it.

This freedom is terrifying, but it also liberates. The most anxious generation in history is also potentially the freest to invent new ways of living, working, building community and finding meaning. Existentialism in the 21st century can’t ignore the climate crisis, artificial intelligence, virtual reality or biotechnology, but it can offer us a framework for navigating these revolutions without losing sight of our capacity to choose what kind of future we want to build.

Critical Relevance: What Should Be Updated in Sartre?

Saying that Sartre is still relevant doesn’t mean accepting him uncritically. Sartrean existentialism has limitations we must recognize in order to update it productively.

First, Sartre overestimated individual freedom and underestimated structural conditioning. Feminists like Simone de Beauvoir (Sartre’s life partner) showed that gender radically conditions our possibilities of being. Postcolonial thinkers have pointed out that Sartre, despite his support for liberation movements, retained a certain Eurocentrism. Philosophers like Foucault argued that the free, autonomous subject is itself a specific historical construction, not a universal truth.

Second, existentialist individualism can be problematic in an era when we urgently need coordinated collective action (climate change, pandemics, tech regulation). Sartrean freedom emphasizes personal choice, but how do we think about responsibility for problems that no individual caused or can solve alone?

Third, Sartre’s phenomenology of consciousness didn’t anticipate neuroscientific discoveries about the limits of introspection, unconscious cognitive biases and neurological determinants of behavior. We aren’t as transparent to ourselves as Sartre assumed.

Yet these challenges don’t invalidate the existentialist project; they make it productively more complex. A 21st-century existentialism needs to integrate structural awareness, collective thinking and humility about the limits of self-awareness, without abandoning the central intuition: that we are, to a significant degree, responsible for who we choose to be.

Conclusion: Sartre in Your Pocket

Let’s return to the opening scene: you wake up, check your phone, make decisions on autopilot. Now, does anything change if you know that Sartre would call on you to live authentically, acknowledging your freedom and responsibility?

Maybe you won’t radically change your life overnight. Existential authenticity isn’t a state you reach but a tension you maintain. But you could start by asking yourself, at key moments: Am I choosing this, or am I letting it happen to me? Does this decision reflect who I want to be, or am I in bad faith, evading my freedom? How do I want the world to be when I act this way?

Sartre’s existentialism remains relevant not because it has definitive answers to the dilemmas of the 21st century, but because it asks the right questions. In an era that constantly offers us escape from our freedom (algorithms that decide for us, prefabricated identities, biological or social determinisms), Sartre reminds us of something simultaneously terrifying and liberating: you are radically free, and therefore radically responsible.

Existentialist philosophy won’t make you happier in the hedonistic sense, but it can make your life more meaningful, more conscious, more authentically yours. And in a world where more and more external forces compete to define, own and optimize you, reclaiming your existential freedom may be the most radical and necessary act there is.

The question isn’t whether Sartre is still relevant. The question is: are you willing to live as if he were?

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