By Rachel Simon, Editor in Chief, Emerson College
Earlier today, while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, I was hit with a strange realization: I will never have a high school reunion. I don’t mean that in the literal sense – most probably, in 2016 and 2021 and so on, the ninety-five other members of the Blind Brook Class of 2011 and I will come together, swapping nostalgic stories about our time as students. There will be a difference, however, between our reunion and the reunions of generations before us. What we won’t be doing, the most obvious thing to do at a high school reunion, is catching up. Because of Facebook, there will be nothing to learn. There will be no marriage unreported, no physical change unseen. Childbirths, cross-country moves, divorces and disease – we’ll have already heard about them all through shared photos and status updates. And this, I decided, is incredibly depressing.
Don’t get me wrong – I love Facebook just as much as the next social media-obsessed member of Generation Y. Besides being an excellent tool for procrastination, Facebook is a wonderful way to forge and maintain connections. It often feels like everyone I’ve met over the last nineteen years is neatly collected in one place, our shared memories ready to be accessed with the click of a button. Many of my Facebook friends are actually that – friends. These are the people I talk to frequently, either online or in-person, Facebook neither a hindrance nor a necessity to our friendships. Yet many more are people I know simply through social situations – sleepaway camp, sports teams, and, of course, school. Hundreds of my Facebook friends are people I’ve known through my time at Blind Brook, classmates I’ve gained and lost on the way to graduation. Most of us didn’t have Facebook accounts until five or six years ago, but during that time, we created our own social network, a web of students present and past, connected by one defining thing – Blind Brook.
While I was in high school, there seemed to be no real detriment to having my classmates as Facebook friends. The site was used more to stay in touch with friends that you didn’t see every day, acquaintances from summer programs and after-school activities. The activity between my classmates and I consisted primarily of non-essential information, wall posts filled with inside jokes and photo albums gathered from parties. We didn’t need to use Facebook to spread important news; for most of us, the biggest announcements to share on the site were what colleges we got into and who asked who to prom.
Only once college came did Facebook begin to take on an entirely new role. The status updates and photos that seemed so trivial during high school were now, for many of us, the main means of learning what our classmates were doing in their new post-Blind Brook lives. Like before, we still used Facebook to post inconsequential bits of information, but now, unlike in the days when we saw each other in person, we also used Facebook to announce things of importance – transfers, moves, new jobs. Simply by clicking on a classmate’s profile, I could see months’ worth of activity, public updates on their now-distant lives. For me, and I’m sure also for plenty of others, this seemed like a blessing. It provided an effortless way of keeping in touch with my classmates, a method of avoiding awkward catch-up sessions and the exchange of niceties over winter break. No longer did I need my classmates to tell me what they’d been up to after graduation, because I already knew – I’d seen it on Facebook.
Twelve years ago, I went with my father to a reunion-like event at his high school, the unveiling of a time capsule his class had buried back in Kindergarten. I don’t remember much about it, but my father tells me it was surprisingly moving. For him, having not attended his past high school reunions, the unveiling was the first time he’d seen many of hid classmates in twenty years. He re-connected with friends he’d long past lost touch with, excitedly sharing news about marriages and children. They’d meant to stay in contact, maybe even had for a few years after high school, but at some point, the phone calls and letters proved too much of a hassle. They had so much to share, so many “status updates” accumulated over the last twenty years, that, for them, the reunion was more than welcome.
I’m never going to have this. For my generation, reunions will be pointless. We may not have seen each other in person for years, sure, but once we reunite, we’ll have nothing to share. While I’m sure I’ll enjoy getting together with old classmates, I probably won’t feel the same excitement and anticipation that colored my parents’ reunions. I wish this weren’t so, but I can’t imagine it changing anytime soon. Facebook, or some future variation of it, is here to stay, providing us with an endless stream of updates on each other’s lives. It saddens me that I’ll be missing out on the sweet, unique experience of a “real” reunion, but it isn’t all bad. Like I said earlier, it’s nice to have all that information at our disposal. I may not have a reunion, but I will have Facebook, where years’ worth of memories lay right at my fingertips, an complex but wonderful entry into the past.
This essay was originally published in the Westmore News, 2012.
Earlier today, while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, I was hit with a strange realization: I will never have a high school reunion. I don’t mean that in the literal sense – most probably, in 2016 and 2021 and so on, the ninety-five other members of the Blind Brook Class of 2011 and I will come together, swapping nostalgic stories about our time as students. There will be a difference, however, between our reunion and the reunions of generations before us. What we won’t be doing, the most obvious thing to do at a high school reunion, is catching up. Because of Facebook, there will be nothing to learn. There will be no marriage unreported, no physical change unseen. Childbirths, cross-country moves, divorces and disease – we’ll have already heard about them all through shared photos and status updates. And this, I decided, is incredibly depressing.
Don’t get me wrong – I love Facebook just as much as the next social media-obsessed member of Generation Y. Besides being an excellent tool for procrastination, Facebook is a wonderful way to forge and maintain connections. It often feels like everyone I’ve met over the last nineteen years is neatly collected in one place, our shared memories ready to be accessed with the click of a button. Many of my Facebook friends are actually that – friends. These are the people I talk to frequently, either online or in-person, Facebook neither a hindrance nor a necessity to our friendships. Yet many more are people I know simply through social situations – sleepaway camp, sports teams, and, of course, school. Hundreds of my Facebook friends are people I’ve known through my time at Blind Brook, classmates I’ve gained and lost on the way to graduation. Most of us didn’t have Facebook accounts until five or six years ago, but during that time, we created our own social network, a web of students present and past, connected by one defining thing – Blind Brook.
While I was in high school, there seemed to be no real detriment to having my classmates as Facebook friends. The site was used more to stay in touch with friends that you didn’t see every day, acquaintances from summer programs and after-school activities. The activity between my classmates and I consisted primarily of non-essential information, wall posts filled with inside jokes and photo albums gathered from parties. We didn’t need to use Facebook to spread important news; for most of us, the biggest announcements to share on the site were what colleges we got into and who asked who to prom.
Only once college came did Facebook begin to take on an entirely new role. The status updates and photos that seemed so trivial during high school were now, for many of us, the main means of learning what our classmates were doing in their new post-Blind Brook lives. Like before, we still used Facebook to post inconsequential bits of information, but now, unlike in the days when we saw each other in person, we also used Facebook to announce things of importance – transfers, moves, new jobs. Simply by clicking on a classmate’s profile, I could see months’ worth of activity, public updates on their now-distant lives. For me, and I’m sure also for plenty of others, this seemed like a blessing. It provided an effortless way of keeping in touch with my classmates, a method of avoiding awkward catch-up sessions and the exchange of niceties over winter break. No longer did I need my classmates to tell me what they’d been up to after graduation, because I already knew – I’d seen it on Facebook.
Twelve years ago, I went with my father to a reunion-like event at his high school, the unveiling of a time capsule his class had buried back in Kindergarten. I don’t remember much about it, but my father tells me it was surprisingly moving. For him, having not attended his past high school reunions, the unveiling was the first time he’d seen many of hid classmates in twenty years. He re-connected with friends he’d long past lost touch with, excitedly sharing news about marriages and children. They’d meant to stay in contact, maybe even had for a few years after high school, but at some point, the phone calls and letters proved too much of a hassle. They had so much to share, so many “status updates” accumulated over the last twenty years, that, for them, the reunion was more than welcome.
I’m never going to have this. For my generation, reunions will be pointless. We may not have seen each other in person for years, sure, but once we reunite, we’ll have nothing to share. While I’m sure I’ll enjoy getting together with old classmates, I probably won’t feel the same excitement and anticipation that colored my parents’ reunions. I wish this weren’t so, but I can’t imagine it changing anytime soon. Facebook, or some future variation of it, is here to stay, providing us with an endless stream of updates on each other’s lives. It saddens me that I’ll be missing out on the sweet, unique experience of a “real” reunion, but it isn’t all bad. Like I said earlier, it’s nice to have all that information at our disposal. I may not have a reunion, but I will have Facebook, where years’ worth of memories lay right at my fingertips, an complex but wonderful entry into the past.
This essay was originally published in the Westmore News, 2012.