New Normals

I am 61 years old and I have a Facebook account. I have occasionally gotten some good-natured flack for being on Facebook, flack coming from my peers and contemporaries. I generally tell them, good-naturedly, that I am now living in the 21^st Century, and I might as well do those things that have become part of this century. That usually ends the chiding.

On Facebook I sometimes respond to posts written by some Facebook friend. On rare occasion I will post something of my own. On those few occasions when I submit something, I have to stop and think about whether I really want to hit the POST button. See, I know that what I am posting will appear on the Facebook pages of others, and I don’t want to seem too forward. I mean, they might have important things to read.

When I look at the Facebook pages of younger individuals, such as people under the age of 30, I will often see the Facebook page of someone who submits several posts per day. One of these posts might state nothing more than “the newly-fallen snow is pretty”. Such a post could well be accompanied by a photo of a snow-covered driveway. Still another post might proclaim the purchase of a new toaster, along with a photograph of the appliance. These types of announcements are pretty common on Facebook.

And that’s just it; I don’t get it. I don’t see why anyone would bother to post such things. Granted, I am 61 years old, but even if Facebook had existed when I was 22 years-old, I still would not have been willing to publish ordinary occurrences and routine activates as if they had some significance. To me, it looks as though these younger individuals are egotistical and self-centered. That’s what it looks like. But frankly, I don’t believe that’s true.

See, I think it’s a generational thing. I think the “new normal” is to post such trivial things as the lunchtime consumption of a taco salad, or the purchase of new shoestrings. The “new normal” sees nothing wrong with sharing this type of trivial information, and consequently it has become socially appropriate to do so. That’s my theory.

It isn’t like it is the first “new normal” in the history of mankind. How about Women’s Suffrage in the early years of the 20^th Century? In my youth there were plenty of “new normals”. Heck, the 1960s were chock full of “new normals”, including sexual behavior, and civil rights. In fact, those “new normals” were far more profound and earth-shaking than people’s posting habits on Facebook.

I have wondered what my long departed father would say about the social changes that are a result of Facebook, Twitter, etc., and then I stop and realize that there is no need to wonder because, well, for all intents and purposes I have become my father. And more than any other “new normal”, that “new normal” has been tough getting used to.