Facebook has recently been gathering old posts from our early years on Facebook to share with us each day, and has given us the option to share these memories with our Facebook friends to look back on as well.
Each day Facebook shows you all of your stories from the same date on different years. Photographs, status updates, and wall posts involving your closest friends and family are displayed on your timeline for the world to see, and it’s definitely interesting to see your online life get drudged back up from the past.
The way I think about presenting myself online has certainly been changed as I spend more time on the Internet. The news stories of employees getting fired, students becoming expelled, and relationships ending or changing because what has been posted online has become a warning for the dangers of online social media, and the feel good stories about family and friends coming together in the community to change the world for the better has taught me about social media’s benefits.
Even the way we interact with each other in the “real world” has been altered by what we share online. SnapChat videos of vacations may interrupt precious exploration time, Instagram posts edit and filter out all of the down time that occurs throughout the day, and Facebook usually online highlights people’s accomplishments.
I’m sure many of my friends know more about what I eat for lunch than who I am as a person, and it’s something that social media can never really get a good grasp of.
It’s very strange to say that the decisions that I have made, the fashion choices I have taken part in, and even the friends I have selected have been highlighted, broadcasted and memorialized for the entire world to see. My life has, voluntarily, been recorded for all eternity online with the ease of social media networking. And now I leave a legacy of my life, neatly edited, online.
Jazzed About Stuff 