{"id":15078,"date":"2024-02-04T12:48:25","date_gmt":"2024-02-04T12:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/04\/as-facebook-turns-20-i-have-something-to-confess\/"},"modified":"2024-02-04T12:48:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T12:48:25","slug":"as-facebook-turns-20-i-have-something-to-confess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/04\/as-facebook-turns-20-i-have-something-to-confess\/","title":{"rendered":"As Facebook turns 20, I have something to confess"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Facebook turns 20 years old today, and if you don\u2019t like it, I\u2019m sure you have your reasons. The numerous scandals. The loss of privacy. The time it drains away from other, better activities. And on and on. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve been thinking about the role Facebook has played in my life, and I\u2019ve come to a realization. I hesitate to share this status update, this decidedly uncool confession, but I\u2019m going to, eventually. Just let me work up to it. <\/p>\n

Last Friday I found myself scrolling down toward the beginning of my timeline. It took a long time to get there, even though I joined the party relatively late. On September 23, 2007, a friend wrote on my wall, \u201cWelcome to Facebook. Finally.\u201d <\/p>\n

By then some of the youngsters had already left, but it all felt new and exciting to me. I was 27, and I remember the strange thrill of tagging your friends in a picture. Or better yet, being<\/em> tagged. There was a lot of work involved, with the digital camera and the unwieldy cable and the uploading and whatnot, but eventually I posted the pictures from that one epic Halloween party. I dressed as Jonathan the YouTube Zombie, which confused some of my early Facebook friends. <\/p>\n

\u201cI like turtles,\u201d I wrote, by way of explanation. <\/p>\n

As hundreds of millions of others joined, Facebook began to change the world, for better and worse. My future boss wrote a viral story titled \u201cThe 12 most annoying Facebookers.\u201d I was probably several of them at one time or another: mysteriously \u201cwaiting for a sign,\u201d or \u201cpondering the meaning of Donnie Darko,\u201d or shamelessly promoting the stories I\u2019d written. <\/p>\n

But my list of friends grew. In 2009, roughly 40 of them wrote on my wall to wish me happy birthday. About the same number congratulated me later that year, when I told Facebook I was going to be a dad. <\/p>\n

As I got older and had children, the tenor of my posts evolved<\/h2>\n

Now the posts shifted away from concerts and parties, and toward the ramblings of the domesticated. I loaded the dishwasher twice in one evening. I wandered the grocery store, \u201ctoo hungry and confused to know what to buy.\u201d My daughter was born, and one afternoon I somehow changed two diapers in the span of two minutes. <\/p>\n

That year, 2010, more than 50 people wished me happy birthday. This, it turned out, was Peak Happy Birthday. Such greetings became less common on Facebook after that, at least for me. Maybe the novelty wore off. We were all tired of something. On September 23, 2011, I wrote this status update: Groggy wife, referring to my persistent alarm clock: \u201cI\u2019ll throw it in the river. I don\u2019t know what river, but I\u2019ll find one.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n

Another child was born. My children began talking, which led to my new favorite genre of Facebook post: Cute Thing My Kid Said. My daughter strung together her first five-word sentence. \u201cI need more too, Mama.\u201d She was talking about a doughnut. Other random kids said cute things, too, and these also became Facebook posts. At the park, a seven-year-old girl started talking to me about my daughter. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kind of girl will she be?\u201d this outgoing youngster asked me. \u201cSports? Lazy? I\u2019m sports. Fashionable? Playing girl, which not sports? Running girl? There are different types of girls.\u201d <\/p>\n

The next year only six people wrote on my timeline for my birthday. One was my wife\u2019s sister, Jill: <\/p>\n

Happy Birthday, Bro-in-Law! Hope it\u2019s GREAT! <\/em> <\/p>\n

Another son was born. I memorialized his arrival in a Facebook post but did not say he was fighting for his life in intensive care. He got well and came home, but 2015 was still a hard year. One day I posted some Bruce Springsteen lyrics: <\/p>\n

Everything dies<\/em> <\/p>\n

Baby, that\u2019s a fact<\/em> <\/p>\n

But maybe everything that dies<\/em> <\/p>\n

Someday comes back<\/em> <\/p>\n

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRO-IN-LAW!!!!!! I shall buy you a Mickey ice cream bar soon!!!!!! <\/em> <\/p>\n

A decade into the Facebook experiment, I was posting less and less. Memories began popping up automatically, old pictures from years past, and I resurfaced them with new comments and new hearts. In 2019 only one person wrote on my timeline for my birthday. I heard a song by the Goo Goo Dolls in the grocery store, which led to a rare status update: <\/p>\n

what if you wrote a song that said \u201ca tired song keeps playing on a tired radio\u201d and then 25 years later your song became the tired song that keeps playing on the tired radio<\/em> <\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic brought an upsurge in Facebook activity as we huddled in our homes and wondered what was happening out there. We sent out encouragement to the brave healthcare workers and paid tribute to departed musicians with virtual concerts on Facebook Live. That July I had my 40th birthday. Jill did not write on my wall. She had died two days earlier, at age 39, after an illness that led to a pulmonary embolism. <\/p>\n

As its best, Facebook is a digital museum<\/h2>\n

As I write this in early February, I have yet to post anything on Facebook in 2024. I don\u2019t know why, exactly. Too busy, perhaps, or too lazy. But this is my confession about Facebook: If given the chance, I would join all over again. <\/p>\n

Yes, I am grateful for Facebook. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never consistently kept a journal, so Facebook is one of the closest things I have to a contemporaneous record of my life. And in some ways it\u2019s better than a journal, because it has pictures and videos and annotations from my friends. <\/p>\n

At its best, Facebook is a digital museum, a repository for the milestones of life. It has made party invitations a lot easier \u2014 and helped me find some good Ultimate Frisbee games. It has connected me with old friends and classmates and relatives who otherwise might have remained disconnected. It has helped preserve my memories of several very dear people who, like Jill, have since passed away. <\/p>\n

Facebook friendship is no substitute for real-life friendship, and someone else\u2019s Facebook pictures are no substitute for your own experience. But at times, Facebook has helped me appreciate real life more deeply. On November 9, 2021, as new coronavirus variants forced us back into isolation, I asked my friends, \u201cWhat\u2019s a small thing that makes you happy?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

The post got 85 comments. People gave thanks for cozy blankets and a fire, hideous fuzzy socks, the smell of leather boots, an empty dishwasher, a cup of hot chocolate, a cold beer after a good run, autumn leaves at golden hour, reading books in the evening before bed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe excited way my dog looks at me in the morning,\u201d my neighbor Cheryl wrote. \u201c\u2018Oh boy! We get to do this all over again?\u201d <\/p>\n

It was an outpouring of gratitude, a celebration of life. Online, yes, but real, and satisfying. Like an orange sunrise. A frosted windowpane. A silent alarm clock on a Sunday morning.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook turns 20 years old today, and if you don\u2019t like it, I\u2019m sure you have your reasons. The numerous scandals. The loss of privacy. The time it drains away from other, better activities. And on and on. But I\u2019ve been thinking about the role Facebook has played in my life, and I\u2019ve come to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}