Getting Older, Facebook Walls and Twitter Feeds

So much for the idea that technology separates us.

by Rod D. Martin
December 31, 2015

Today is New Year's Eve, yesterday was my younger daughter's birthday, and three months ago I turned 46. And it occurred to me this morning that life is a great deal like a Facebook wall or a Twitter feed.

We spend a lot of time on both these days. They move the world. Polls find that large numbers use them as a major source of news, many as their primary news source. A lot of us older folks keep track of our kids through Facebook in particular (though FaceTime has augmented that in lovely ways). I'm sure the kids keep track of us too, if only to aid in evasion.

There was one month several years ago in which my entire high school class found one another through Facebook. Many of us had not been in touch with more than a handful of our classmates for many years. Suddenly nearly all of us were "together" again, despite having scattered across continents. We've stayed together, regularly interacting as a group and forming adult friendships that previously w…