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The Facebook timebomb
Mar. 29th, 2012 03:00 pmWhen Facebook was a bit younger, there was no option for "widower" or "widow" in the "relationship status" section. Similarly, there wasn't (and still isn't) much of a system to cope with the tedious actuarial fat that people die. If there are 35m registered people in the UK, even with a skewed age distribution, my guess is that about 200,000 people on Facebook in the UK are popping their clogs every year.
These are a couple of the more obvious flaws in the creation of Facebook, It made no intrinsic allowance for the fact that people change in ways beyond getting a degree and getting married. Facebook was created by people in their early 20s with an outlook on life of their early 20s, most of whom probably do not have aspects of their past that they were happy to make public at some point, but very much want to keep under-publicized today.
Now, however, certain aspects of Facebook are leading people to quit. The Facebook home page is, basically a "timeline". Well, that's fine when you are young, but when you have just split up from a long-term partner, and when you now have a new partner (who is also on Facebook, obv), your new partner is hardly going to be delighted that the vast majority of your Facebook identity is related to when you were with your former spouse.
There are options, here. You can delete your past, bit by bit. But the chances are that you don't WANT to delete your past. We are very much what we were. The child is father of the man, etc etc.
That creates a built-in conflict that is hardly the best building block for a future relationship. What's the easiest option if you have a Facebook identity that you would rather your new close friend did not have complete access to? Simple, delete the identity and tell the new significant other that you don't have a Facebook page. And you will also say that you don't want one (because, of course, if you create one, the questions about your past start appearing again).
It's one thing not discussing the past with your new loved one, on the understanding that everyone has bits of the past that they might not want to talk about. It's quite another to do so with a Facebook page, which is forever trying to dig up your entire biographical history and forcing you to delete tags and mentions that you don't want other people to see.
As more and more people enter this area with Facebook aging, I suspect that we will see more and more people just deleting their identity. After all, most of the posts are fairly tedious shit that add little to your life. Those communications that you do have that you value are probably limited to half a dozen people or fewer. That kind of thing will soon be coverable on other networks such as those used by mobile phones. A little app can set up a chat room. You don't need Facebook for that.
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These are a couple of the more obvious flaws in the creation of Facebook, It made no intrinsic allowance for the fact that people change in ways beyond getting a degree and getting married. Facebook was created by people in their early 20s with an outlook on life of their early 20s, most of whom probably do not have aspects of their past that they were happy to make public at some point, but very much want to keep under-publicized today.
Now, however, certain aspects of Facebook are leading people to quit. The Facebook home page is, basically a "timeline". Well, that's fine when you are young, but when you have just split up from a long-term partner, and when you now have a new partner (who is also on Facebook, obv), your new partner is hardly going to be delighted that the vast majority of your Facebook identity is related to when you were with your former spouse.
There are options, here. You can delete your past, bit by bit. But the chances are that you don't WANT to delete your past. We are very much what we were. The child is father of the man, etc etc.
That creates a built-in conflict that is hardly the best building block for a future relationship. What's the easiest option if you have a Facebook identity that you would rather your new close friend did not have complete access to? Simple, delete the identity and tell the new significant other that you don't have a Facebook page. And you will also say that you don't want one (because, of course, if you create one, the questions about your past start appearing again).
It's one thing not discussing the past with your new loved one, on the understanding that everyone has bits of the past that they might not want to talk about. It's quite another to do so with a Facebook page, which is forever trying to dig up your entire biographical history and forcing you to delete tags and mentions that you don't want other people to see.
As more and more people enter this area with Facebook aging, I suspect that we will see more and more people just deleting their identity. After all, most of the posts are fairly tedious shit that add little to your life. Those communications that you do have that you value are probably limited to half a dozen people or fewer. That kind of thing will soon be coverable on other networks such as those used by mobile phones. A little app can set up a chat room. You don't need Facebook for that.
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