Growing Up on Facebook→
As a survivor of the postage-stamp era, college was my big chance to doff the roles in my family and community that I had outgrown, to reinvent myself, to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity. Can you really do that with your 450 closest friends watching, all tweeting to affirm ad nauseam your present self?
This scares me a little too. There are some people you need to lose contact with. I moved a lot when I was younger, I lost many friends, and it turns out it’s good for you. I barely remember the BFF I had in 6th grade. It’s good for me, it kept me from rooting (is that a word?) in one place. I need to think I can leave my current home anytime I want.
