Facebook revealed a new way to archive your life today during Facebook F8. You can read about it here from USA Today.
The basics are that soon you’ll be able to share your life from birth archived by years in what Facebook calls a Timeline. The years will highlight what Facebook deems important events from that year. Which means there is no longer a time before Facebook and the age 13 consent goes out the window, which according to this article in Science Daily, it may already be irrelevant because about 7.5 million users are younger than 13.
Is the next step parents transferring the content about their child’s birth, first steps, etc. to the child’s profile?
While the theory is you will have control over your timeline, if you are really adding things since birth and your friends are adding content items of you since birth, how much control do you really have?
” You can feature items in your Timeline, and add or remove items,” states this Gizmodo article on Facebook F8 announcements. “Control of who sees an item in your timeline is also available. This is an important step to assure that Facebook’s recent subscription feature doesn’t expose a users private photos with total strangers. So expect to start spending hours fine tuning your Facebook life which is exactly what Facebook wants. You spending hours and hours adjusting your online history for your friends.”
I don’t have hours and hours to add more than 20 years of content, nor do I want others adding that content for me. I already approve photos and posts before they’re public. However, my concern isn’t so much about me as it is those who have had Facebook since they were 13.
All of those high school photos, college photos, poor choices, bad taste status updates are archived forever. How will that affect their future?