Dear 11 year old me,
Dear 11 year old me,
It’s 2008 and you’re about to create your first Facebook account! You might be a bit skeptical of putting your name out there but your sister is always on it so you’re thinking it’s the “big kid thing” to do. I know you’re more drawn to Club Penguin and MSN Messenger chats these days but in the coming years Facebook will become a big part of your life. You’ll be in school for media production, learning about technologies and social networking platforms that don’t even exist yet. And I’m also sad to report that as of March 2017 that Club Penguin has shut down.
Today in 2017, people are so invested in their personal brand. What they post online, how many likes they get, how many followers they have. It’s a strange and superficial world where those with a large following are paid thousands, if not millions of dollars, to promote a product they might not believe in. People connect through the internet although for some reason pretend that they don’t know each other in real life. The internet is a world of self expression and discovery, however in contrast has made people more enclosed in their own bubble.
But I don’t want to just focus on the negative aspects. Facebook has allowed for people to reconnect with those you haven’t seen in a while, join groups that collect people of similar interests and talk to your group members in real time to finish up a school project. What’s left behind is an archive of your life and a trail of crossed paths that you can look back to. A history of your life online, and snapshots of life offline.
I don’t want to lecture you how to live your life because the mistakes you’ll make are part of who make me, the way I am today. Although I do want you to realize early on to prioritize physical experiences over the online world. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what your profile picture looks like, what other people’s profiles look like, or how many shares your post gets. Your measure of happiness should not be the number of likes you get on a post, but rather the number of people you love seated at your dinner table. It should be measured by traveling new places and seeing new views of the world. It should be measured by the number of laughs you have sitting in a park with your friends. Do not live passively by scrolling endlessly at your Facebook newsfeed and feeling anxious when you haven’t checked your notifications in a few hours. Your life is more than what you carefully curate online for the world to see.
I think of my future and the children I might have one day and hope that they won’t be as invested in their social presence as I am. However, I believe that it will only get worse and it will be harder for people to have the option to unplug. But I want to continue to stick true to my own values and recognize what I truly treasure in life. That means surrounding yourself with people you love, going on new adventures and putting your phone away for dinner.
As a 20-year-old, you’re about to embark in an incredible 3 month journey to south-east Asia and Europe with your best friend and boyfriend who you happen to meet online. You’re going to challenge yourself by pushing out of your comfort zone and taking a digital detox in order to fully find yourself.
I’ll write back in another 10 years.
From the future,
Layla
