Facebook’s Dark Side

I love Facebook … just like millions of other middle-aged parents with kids who wish there was an app that prevented Facebook access to anyone over 30.

Things don’t change. I remember when I was a kid in the 1960s and the hippies all said that nobody over thirty could be trusted. My mother and father, who weren’t yet forty, said that the hippies would all eventually join the establishment that they purported to hate. At my young age, I couldn’t believe that the hippies would ever stop wearing hipsters, bellbottoms, crocheted or fringed vests, beaded headbands and belts, peace signs, and halter tops. My whole world revolved around their fashion statements. If they gave in, moved off their communes, and started wearing suits to their corporate jobs, then what was the point of their movement? As an adult, I see that their movement influenced much more than fashion. However, I will never get over my love of crocheted granny-square vests, handbags, and afghans.

But, back to Facebook. I understand why kids don’t want their parents to read their ungrammatical, misspelled, deepest, most outermost thoughts. I get it. After a couple of months of reading the posts of my nieces and nephews, I didn’t want to be privy to their musings anyway. And, the extra letters at the end of the last words in each sentence annoyed the hell out of meeeeee.

But what really shocked me was seeing  pictures of people I hadn’t seen in twenty or thirty years. They looked like their parents looked when we were younger. To not see somebody for almost three decades and then see their current picture is mindboggling. How did we become our parents? Every time I get a friend request from someone from my youth who just discovered Facebook, I’m torn. I want to hear from them, but do I want to see them? It’s downright disheartening.

I have a son who is a senior in high school. Some of my Facebook friends from high school have grandchildren. None of my friends in my real life have grandchildren yet and I like it that way. I want to be at the same stage of life as my friends. But Facebook has taken away any sense of continuity or proportion. Now I am forced to realize that I am old enough to be a grandmother. No wonder we look like our parents looked. People who see you every day don’t notice your daily decline. However, people who haven’t seen you in thirty years can now be heard shrieking, “Holy Crap, what the hell happened to her?”

I guess once you get used to looking at your parents’ generation posing as your generation, you can move forward and appreciate your online friendships without obsessing about the ravages of time. It gets easier, I suppose … eventuallyyyyyy.

 

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