Dear Little Me,
Dear little me,
(For those who are not me, bear with me, little me would understand the jumping around but this is just how my mind works and I’m writing from the heart right? So I will let my mind jump)
It’s 2017 now. So think back about… 9 years… wait is that right? Oh my gosh it is… 9 years… well… it’s 9 years ago now, 2008. You’re on y0ur computer, something that seems to be happening more and more each day. You open up Internet Explorer and type in facebook.com into the URL bar and hit enter. Your friends really want you to be on Facebook since everyone else was. You’re late boarding this train. You have a fake account since your parents don’t want to have Facebook, but you cave. You click “create account” and off you go. From this day forward, you will spend the next 9 years, nearly a decade, of your life dedicated to this platform. I mean, come on, who is still using MySpace?
What do you think your life on Facebook is going to look like in 9 years, little me? Right now, it’s a bare bone idea, share some stuff, write on people’s wall so they can talk with you, post a cheesy photo or two…Everything and I mean pretty much everything is public. You can’t hide it from people. You control who sees what by what whether or not they’re friends with you on Facebook. It was easier to Facebook stalk people back then wasn’t it?
Now, let me tell you, your parents aren’t gonna be happy when they find out what you have done. They’re strict without being too strict (as you will learn, turns out there are kids worse off than you, just not the people around you currently). But keep the page, keep developing it. They’re gonna release a tool that will show you all these memories later. Plus, this turns out to be a good photo album.
Right now, in 2008, this platform looks no more than a silly little social tool, something to share your pictures with, somewhere to connect with your friends after school. But it becomes so much more than that. Mind you, this platform doesn’t do anything for your mental health (which will take a major hit about 3 years from now), but it won’t do anything negative either so don’t worry. But oddly enough, when you get to university, it will be your lifeline.
You know a few people who decide to delete Facebook when leaving high school, but you don’t want to, they don’t succeed in pressuring you to and guess what, Facebook becomes a staple to your classes and program.
But I’m jumping ahead of myself, let’s work our way to 2017. I can’t give you actual year by year plays on the evolution of Facebook, but I can give you an idea of the major milestones I remember. When you leave elementary and go into high school (context for those who are reading this and aren’t me, I don’t have middle school in the school system I was in, it was elementary then straight into high school), you notice a very big change on Facebook, they started to change the layout, you couldn’t find your status bar, pictures started to go from full sized portraits to squares. I still remember going on MSN messenger back then and everyone messaging one another trying to find their own status bars. I don’t remember how the oldest iteration of Facebook looked so… can’t help you there lol. But so much started to evolve.
Now, Facebook still kept those damned squared photos, I still miss the longer ones, and they even made a feature where your profile picture could be a short live video and man that creeps me the hell out. I don’t think I’m alone cause I don’t see any of my friends have it. Only one YouTuber I was unfollowing had it. But now they added Facebook Messenger which takes over MSN Messenger’s gap when they disappear. Did they yet? Either way, Facebook Messenger is pretty great, all your Facebook friends are able to talk to you on that, but you mainly use it to talk to your boyfriend and bosses at your internship.
Quickly now, since we mentioned profile pictures, it is interesting actually. I can tell I’m getting to that old person phase where you want everything to stay the same. You will grow to constantly change Facebook profile pictures, like once a week at the least, you love the change; you need the change. But now, for the past few years, I haven’t really wanted to change my picture unless I have a really cool one from a fun trip or just one that makes me look good. I never thought I could see the difference in my age through Facebook, but now is a good time to remind myself, past, present and future, that I need to try to remain as flexible as I can mentally (physically wouldn’t hurt either) so I can have fun and explore what the world has to offer as time goes on.
To address the previous statement now about how school works off of Facebook. They, as in students and faculty will create useful groups, like the kiddish ones you have now but useful. A lot of students will post things on Facebook pages to share information about assignments, especially when the prof isn’t doing their jobs properly, they will share study notes on there for the masses, and in my social media class, the last class of my educational career, it is a hub for sharing and analyzing memes along with sharing information the assignments/weeks during the course. If you’re working on group projects, you will be added to Facebook groups, chat groups, everything in order to share information and co-ordinate your efforts to finish a project on time. Who would have thought that you would actually need to be on Facebook for educational purposes.
You know your iPod touch? One day, you’ll get the iPhone 4S and from there, things will slowly become more and more about your phone. Now what does that have to do with Facebook? Well let me tell you, they will create an app for Facebook, you will have access to Facebook wherever you are. If you think you’ll have trouble with Facebook, you won’t. It’ll be there, in the palm of your hands. You will open it over 20 times a day, scroll through endless trash as many people don’t post statuses anymore. You won’t be able to escape from Facebook. You can share directly onto these platforms for minute to minute updates on all your friends. You can talk to them everywhere, not just from home. The world literally is at your fingertips, in the palm of your hand. Facebook basically owns everything now, Instagram, a place to share photos, Snapchat, a place to share your day for a quick while, Whatsapp, a free texting chat app for your phone… You’ll learn what that all is later, let’s not ruin the fun.
You won’t remember much of a time before Facebook, you will grow up with Facebook, it will become odd for those who don’t have it. Those who don’t will become an inconvenience to those who do. It has integrated itself so far into your life. But here’s a big tip. Learn how Facebook works with the people, learn how people use it. That will help you leverage your future self, any brand that you represent and just help you have a general understanding of how to leverage the big platforms in the future.
So little me, after learning all that, you better learn to love Facebook or at least learn how to integrate it into your life, which won’t be a problem, but you’re gonna be stuck with that for a very long time.
But remember, for personal reasons, you are not your follower count, you are not the number of friends you have on Facebook, you are not your digital profile. Sometimes, you need to step away from it all as much as it is good to be in it all. But stick with Facebook, it will help you along in your journey. Funny enough, I think this social platform has helped me to not talk to people and feed into my “introvertism” (and secretly, I couldn’t be happier). Learn how to differentiate yourself from your profile, learn that sometimes, it’s best not to share everything but it’s good to share somethings. Oh, and you’ll still be using this thing as a big photo album, it is pretty damn handy for that considering you tend to misplace all your photos.
Just thinking over the years, they start to look more and more grim as the fear of terrorism grows, you try to fight off your fears of it. People become more and more fearful of their social medias, their own phones tracking them. Just…try to fight off the fears, learn to control what you share online to protect yourself when needed. Things get rough sometimes, someone will try to steal your identity online and steal people’s secrets and dirty your name. But you just have to learn how to deal with it. Social media doesn’t have to make or break you.
Little me, good luck with the rest of your educational career, I’m telling you, you’re gonna struggle through it all, but you’re gonna come out more nerdy (and less ashamed of it), more confident, more excited and more grown up. You will be an awesome human being and I know you, you won’t believe me, but come back here after 9 years and tell me that I was wrong. I can’t tell you what the future is beyond this, but learn that planning out everything is not always great and just ride the flow, do work that comes at you, explore options and try not to fuck up too royally okay? Cool. Good talk, good talk.
Best of luck,
Big Me.
