I have seen some rants on Facebook and other social media sites recently, complaining about how stupid and irrelevant the Facebook memories feature is. Sarah Hagi wrote an article in GQ "Facebook Memories are Still a Hot Mess", she talks about the irrelevance of what was posted years ago and how it's Facebook's feeble attempt to get you to interact on their site. Memories have caused such a stir that Global News did an article on adding filters to your memories to block out sad memories, "Facebook adds filters to ‘On This Day’ feature to weed out sad memories". Both of these articles make some good arguments as to why maybe Facebook's memories aren't great. However, here's why they are great!
I was looking at my FB Memories a couple of days ago and I thought, very similarly to the GQ article, what was I thinking? Why in the world would I share that? I thought the world needed to know how great I was at procrastinating but also there's a reason why I had to hunker down and finish my assignments in university the day before they were due...I was having a lot of fun! Not my proudest moments...but who I was nontheless. I then went to update my current status about the attacks in Paris and my "fully educated" opinion on the matter. I immediately thought back to the "memories" I had just looked at and thought am I going to care about this status in three years? Am I going to be proud of this status three years or more from now? I decided not to share anything at that moment. It prompted me to think about my students and adults who bombard Social Media with mindless postings. How often do we share, post, tweet, etc without T.H.I.N.K.ing.
It's important to remember everything we post is "out there" and is what creates our digital footprint, digital resume, our digital portfolio for the world to see. Our digital footprint is there for good! So if we are disgusted about our posts on FB from years ago, or think they are irrelevant and useless maybe we will be a little more conscious about what we post today. When your "memories" on FB make you think about what you are going to post today, that's what makes them great!
Take a second and T.H.I.N.K. so we can work towards creating a more positive world through social media, we can be proud of what we posted 3+ years ago and we can create a great digital footprint for ourselves. I hear parents/teachers/adults alike complain about what is being posted on Social Media or telling me why Social Media is so terrible, however, our children do not have a large base of people modelling how to appropriately act on Social Media in a lot of cases. It is important for us as the adults to be involved in the digital world and model great digital behaviour! So the next time you see your "memories" on Facebook or hear someone complaining about the memories on Facebook T.H.I.N.K and start creating great "memories" now for so you can be proud of your accomplishments when you look back at your "memories" and so you can start being a great model citizen in the digital world for the younger generation seeking guidance/role models in the world of Social Media.
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