the bummer about social media

The Tale of a Facebook Folly

I had a phone conversation recently with a dear friend. She told me about how her best friend just had her baby, and how during the labor, the friend kept her in the loop as they live many states away from each other. But the friend having the baby didn't call for about two hours, at which point my friend was pretty sure she must have had the baby.

My friend got a phone call from another friend asking her, "Have you heard?!! It's a girl!! And her name is... and she weighs..."

Now, naturally, my friend wondered why this other friend, not nearly as close to the mama delivering, knew all of this before she did. The phone friend said she had read it on so-and-so's facebook status. And then my friend wondered how so-and-so knew. Because so-and-so definitely was not as close to her best friend having the baby.

Turns out, the father of the baby to be born had called his sister. And his sister posted the news joyously on her facebook page. And then other friends wrote congratulatory messages on their facebook pages. And it turns out that my friend, living in a remote area was out of cell signal. So even though her best friend was trying to reach her all the while, she had been unable to get through.

But it still sucked. Because my friend wanted to hear this most happy news from the mouth of her best friend. And her best friend wanted to be the one to tell her first. But because social media moves faster than wind, she heard it from a friend of a friend of a sister of a husband all through that handy status update.

This isn't the first time I've heard this story. I have another friend who learned of her own sister's baby being born through the husband's twitter update. And it just didn't feel right. The baby had barely taken it's first inhale before the dad thumb-typed the news. The problem being he hadn't told his wife he was going to do this. So she missed out on telling people herself, person to person, voice to voice. And in the midst of this highly charged moment of birth, they had a little fight because she was so disappointed that people were calling her to tell her the news that she had wanted to call and tell to them.

All I'm saying, is that I think there have to be some rules put in place of common etiquette and due process with social media. Because sometimes I think things move just too fast as it is, and we're missing the whole point of intentional community and sincere relationships.