Keeping up on Facebook

A neighbor of mine mentioned that her daughter went to a birthday party a week or so ago and since her husband picked the girl up she didn’t know that her daughter had ridden a horse at the party.

Until she saw the picture on Facebook.

The day we had snow in Hickory, John stepped out of work during his lunch break and took a picture of it with his phone and sent it to Brittany in Charleston with the text “we’ve got snow!”

She replied, “I heard that from my Hickory friends on Facebook 2 hours ago!”

The other night I debated about staying up (or getting up) for the lunar eclipse. I didn’t and the next morning when I saw about 12 comments on Facebook that people couldn’t see anything here because it was cloudy, I was both glad I hadn’t and also glad I knew that I had made the wise choice.

Several Christmas cards this year had very familiar pictures in them. (Yup, I saw them the minute they were taken because they had been posted on Facebook!)

Much of the news in the Christmas letter was familiar too, because whether the person lives in Alaska, Seattle or my home town, Chicago, I “was there” when it happened! (Thanks to Facebook.)

This year I’ve heard right away when old friend’s parents died, (too many!) been there through illnesses and surgery, several births, new job announcements and kids’ graduations. I know what my friends’ houses look like, even if I’ve never been to their town, I know what their kids look like, even if I haven’t seen those friends since we were in high school, and I even know their hopes and dreams.

Some may think Facebook has shrunk people’s worlds because they “spend so much time at the computer”, but it’s expanded mine!

For all the talk about people wasting hours at a time glued to a computer screen instead of getting out and experiencing life, I have to counter that modern technology has expanded my social connections in more ways than I ever could have imagined. I would even venture to argue that it has helped create some “extra” time to enjoy special moments in new ways with those that I love.

Love The One You’re With?

Texting is a hot button right now. People either love it (those doing it) or hate it (those being ignored by the person doing it.)

Oprah is even throwing her clout around getting people to promise not to text or phone while driving. A good idea.

The last time we visited Brittany, both times we took her out to dinner she was texting through most of the meal. She seemed to think it was OK because she included us in the “conversation” with her friend. She’s not the only one though, and it has always bothered me when people answer their cell phones while we’re having a conversation. I believe that “in person” trumps people who can leave messages.

There was an article in the Boston Globe recently that discussed how kids use electronic devices as a crutch: to get out of social interaction, as an excuse for being rude, or as a way to always appear occupied. The writer called it fauxting. One of the online commenters wrote, “There are worse things in the world than fauxting, but it’s a pretty sad commentary on the isolation that so many feel even in an era of unprecedented connectivity. You may have 600 friends on Facebook but how many do you really know? How many would you want to have lunch with? You may follow hundreds of people on Twitter but how many of them would you follow to the ends of the earth? We are, on one hand, extremely connected, constantly trying to find bonds with another person. And on the other hand, we're insular and isolating with our behavior when we need to actually interact.”

It’s hard to wrap our minds around how Facebook both connects and separates us and how texting and emails keep us up on each others lives, but rarely creates real conversation.

I had to laugh at Betty White’s Saturday Night Live monologue when she called Facebook a great way to waste an afternoon. She said in her day people felt like it was punishment to look at friends’ vacation pictures and pictures of their children and grandchildren.

And yet, maybe Facebook has its place there. I love to look at pictures that friends put up. Maybe it’s the difference between someone inviting you over to “see my home movies” and posting them for you to “look or not”. I also love that on someone’s birthday their “wall” fills up with Happy Birthday messages and that when someone is sick or has a family member who is sick the prayers pour in. It can really be something!

I do think people care. And they certainly want to stay connected. People simply need to concentrate on one thing (or one person) at a time. Just because Brittany can dry her hair with one hand, text with the other and talk to me, doesn’t mean she should.

In today’s world we’re overloaded with ways to interact, but we’ll figure it out.

We’ll have to, because they’re not going away.

Communicating with Kids Their Way

I’m on Facebook because of Brittany.

She stores all of her photos on her Facebook profile and walks me through them on the phone. For this to happen I would have to sign in under her user id and look at one, which would kick her off the site, then she would sign in again to see what I was looking at, which kicked me off.

Needless to say this took a long time.

So I joined Facebook to get my own login. I didn’t create much of a profile except a picture and a little blurb about where I had gone to college and where I live now, but it allowed us to both see her pictures at the same time.

Then Brittany started sending me “bumper stickers” and “writing on my wall”.

The last time she wrote on my wall she was 3 years old and she got a spanking!

Before I knew it friends of hers started asking me to be friends. Then they started writing on my wall!

Somehow classmates from college and even high school started finding my profile and I decided to make it a little nicer. I called Brittany to help. She began by adding my maiden name for those people who knew me the first 21 years of my life and wouldn’t have a clue who Nancy Geiger is.

Then she discovered messages I didn’t know I had in sections of the profile I didn’t know existed. She cleaned that all up for me. At one point while working on it she said, “Only one of your friends is online right now – I guess it’s kind of late for them.” (It was 11:00 pm. She meant my friends are old.)

Then out of the blue she said, “Dad says hi”. I knew he wouldn’t be caught dead with a Facebook account so I thought maybe he was texting her. He was out of town on a business trip and always texts her goodnight before turning his phone off.

Turns out she was chatting with him online while working on my site and talking to me, apparently keeping it all straight. So the 3 of us “talked” awhile.

USA Today had an article not too long ago about the latest Facebook fad, the pass-it-forward viral game "25 Random Things About Me." 25 Things arrives as a Facebook note from a friend. That friend posts 25 facts about himself and "tags" 25 people and asks them to do the same thing.

I was already spending more time on Facebook then I wanted and this reminded me of a chain letter so I wasn’t interested. Until Brittany sent me hers and I read #22.

“My parents are two of my favorite people in the whole world-- I'm so lucky to have them.”

Who says kids don’t know how to communicate anymore just because their way of “reaching out and touching” is different from our way? Works for me!