Social media is controversial. Some people post all of their thoughts, beliefs and ideas, while others are more private and some edit every photo only posting the perfect ones. I think only posting perfect photos leads to several issues, but that’s not the point I am trying to make. Facebook is literally a digital scrapbook of our lives. Future researchers will look at our profiles to understand our lives and our beliefs. Books (or maybe digital websites??) will be published about some of our lives using Facebook as a primary source. Wow… that’s crazy to say. Facebook as a primary source?!?!
Although Facebook depicts my life, and others lives, how accurate is it? I was recently going through my newsfeed and one of my friends was dating someone that looked different from whom I remembered. After looking at her profile I realized that she had a new boyfriend. I tried to remember the name of her previous boyfriend, so l looked through her old photos but noticed that none were there. I completely understand why someone would delete previous photos from a relationship or friendship or even delete embarrassing photos of themselves, but what will happen in 50 years when someone is trying to understand your life and there are huge “Facebook” gaps ? I mean I guess understanding the culture of Facebook is key to understanding the bias depiction of someone’s life… but still.
There have been countless times throughout my research where I have wished there was more information about an event, another photo, or a photo at a different angle. It’s okay if those documents never existed, but if someone purposely deleted them because they were standing next to their ex-boyfriend, or they looked bad in it or whatever, I find that so frustrating. I would consider myself a relatively sentimental person when it comes to photos, but my main hesitation towards deleting digital photos is that they never come back! Just because the photo is not there, does not mean a friendship, or a relationship or a bad hair phase did not exist it means there is poor documentation of it. Every time permanently I delete a photo, I cringe a little bit.
Just like you need to think before you post please think before you delete.
Sincerely,
Many people that have done research on poorly documented events
It’s crazy to think that Facebook will be a primary source (and already is) for generations to come. Of course, this is contingent upon the technology that makes FB work staying alive. We have some of the most photographed people ever, yet no physical photos. Will there be some sort of dark spot on history if we can’t maintain the digital assets?
Not just Facebook, Twitter too. I covfefe, you covfefe, he/she/they covfefe? But seriously, academia hasn’t caught up with it yet. I tweeted at the American Political Science Association and told them to come up with a citation method for tweets… we’re going to need it.