For this week’s Mini Mission I decided to use the Wolfram Alpha website in order to see a report of my Facebook usage. Over the last few years I have stopped using Facebook as much as I used to so I was not surprised to see quite infrequent activity on my profile. I would suggest that this has two main explanations, the increase in ads and promotions which constantly seem to fill up my newsfeed has made Facebook less appealing to me, and for me Facebook has become more useful for the messenger application and the actual feed itself is less interesting than other sites such as Instagram.

With this in mind, I was not surprised that since May last year, the length of my posts have been steadily decreasing and my most common post is photographs. This is not surprising either as I often post photos if we are celebrating a friend’s birthday or after an event which I would like to share with my family and friends who I do not get to see very often.

My ‘most commented on post’ is a picture of my parents on their 25th wedding anniversary, and some of my most commonly used words include ‘happy’, ‘beautiful’, ‘celebrating’, ‘life’ and ‘birthday’. My Facebook presence basically consists of photos and a few posts which celebrate the people in my life who I hold close to me, as well as the occasional appreciation post, and pictures of my experiences. If someone were to find me on Facebook, they would probably not work out much about me except that I love my friends and family.

It is interesting to think about how you only post what you want other people to see on your Facebook page. Only the photos where you look good, show off your fancy holidays, or having fun and loving life, which isn’t always an accurate representation of someone’s life. People’s online profiles (including mine) often only portray the best in their lives, the successful, happy, and perfect moments. It is important to remember that what you read online doesn’t come close to telling you everything there is to know about the real person.