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At what point do people become nothing more than just a picture on your Facebook timeline? That is a question I found myself asking a few nights ago as I scrolled through my newsfeed with nothing to do as I tried to get to sleep one evening. On the border of restlessness and sweet ignorant sleep I found myself staring at a few uploaded pictures some of my friends had uploaded innocently sharing their lives with the world. But truthfully I have to wonder if I can even call them my ‘friends’ at this point in my life as I haven’t spoken to or even thought about some of these people in more than a few years aside from this one news feed that I tend to check on the rare occasion I actually find my phone near me.
In a society that has made technology so readily available to everyone and information so easily distributed between individuals it comes as no surprise that privacy is one of the many things that has changed with the modern age into something quite different to what it used to be, a thing many still struggle to accept as the years go by and the governments struggle to push their feet further into the door of our own private lives. But staring at these pictures that my past acquaintances and various family members have shared on the many popular media sites that are available to use in todays times I have to wonder, what is privacy and how seriously do we take it?
You may think my two trains of thought are completely separate, but believe me as I contemplated going through the many pictures that were available to me through Facebook and Instagram and whatnot I slowly began to wonder if I wasn’t intruding just a bit into my acquaintances’ private lives with my perusing. After all despite my initial exposure to the picture, I was actively going further into this person’s life to see more of what they shared as I scrolled passively through their feed. In effect, I was ‘Facebook stalking’ these people I could barely call friends, whom I haven’t seen in forever, but still had access to their lives.
It makes me question a lot of things that we share on social media, pictures and life events with the people we’re supposedly close with, how much information are we comfortable with these acquaintances having as we live our lives in front of them?
Of course that’s one part of the argument, another part could be that people have evolved to require just a little less privacy as they integrate with the world so that they are able to feel a part of it. Because what are they, who are they, if they have no footprint in someone else’s life? It’s an interesting question to ponder, for me at least.
Still, what does it take for someone to be more than just a picture on your timeline? That’s a bit of a tough question. My brother had a nice explanation of what those types of people could be called though, Forever People. These people, whom despite being an occasional face on your timeline, also happen to be a constant feature in your daily lives. An interesting concept as you consider that this brings a bit of privacy back into your lives as this close knit group of people become something of a trusted network of individuals you wouldn’t mind living your life in font of. It creates a whole new layer of security as you chose to expose yourself to a certain level of risk on social media by sharing those photos and life events with only those people and as everyone knows the internet is a forever kind of place, so shouldn’t it be a place we’re only willing to share these things with forever kind of people?
Still most people in society these days wouldn’t be satisfied with that. The question of how one expands their social circle and meets new people comes into question and therefore that layer of protection becomes compromised. I think that’s where the rest of the acquaintances come in, the ones you almost remember, but not quite. The friends you had for a moment but then drifted away from. People are innately social creatures and because of this they feel the need to share their experiences beyond their close knit group of forever people and that’s where the growing number of interactions comes from and I think where the opening of the door that governments try to pry their feet into as they try to regulate the flow of such information.
But where do we draw the line?
Some would draw it by the government interference as the shoe steps too far inside our private lives, but by then hasn’t the door been left to open wider by our own social hunger for interaction with the world? Already we have gathered more acquaintances than we can count and forgotten what it is a Forever Person should feel like. We all become solo players out to better number one and watch the world burn around us as we do so, because quite frankly it’s not our problem. Meaningful connection has become lost in the face of over connectedness as people build long lists of expectations harvested from exposure to exaggerated newsfeeds and manipulated social media couple that with the unfortunately shrinking attention spans that comes with every generation you have a disastrous outcome waiting to be let loose on the world behind that door.
It’s a sad thing to wonder on, and all it took was glancing at my Facebook newsfeed and all these photos of the people I really should remember the names of without needing to look at the tags.
