In this illuminating video, Is Facebook Changing Our Identity?, created by PBS and hosted Mike Rugnetta, Mike speaks about memory, witnessing, identity, and how these things are affected by Facebook. As he describes in the video, Facebook allows us to post pictures and status updates therefore saving memories. With the new timeline feature, one could literally scroll quickly through the memories of their life. Obviously that may not be entirely possible. But imagine if people born today started posting to Facebook (whether it be a photo, status, or post on someone’s wall) of every major event in their lives! Each birthday, vacation, delicious dinner, concerts, good grade, job, etc. One could conceivably go on Facebook and scroll through a visual and extremely organized depiction of their whole life! However, notice how these examples are all good and happy events. An important part of Facebook is your friends, the people who you expect to see all these posts. Very rarely to people make posts about a bad day they had, that they lost their camera, went to hospital, have depression, failed a class, or broke up with a partner. People typically do not want all 500 of their Facebook friends to know this. While these things can vary on the effect they will have on your life, it has no significance to whether or not you will post about it on Facebook. Of course people occasionally do this but only in a fraction amount compared to happy statuses and pictures of their cats.

We form our identity through our memory. What we have experienced and more importantly what we remember shapes who we are and how we represent that. So what would happen if we selectively remembered? What if we only remembered the most happy and good parts of our lives? Would we still be the same person? Would we identify the same way? Facebook essentially does this selective remembering. Looking through our Facebook timeline, we remember all the good parts of our lives. Not only do we see specific things, but we see them in way better clarity and accuracy than our own memories could give us. So as we continually post to Facebook and look at our timelines, are we forming our identity around what Facebook shows us? Around specific memories of our lives? I’m not too sure. Maybe PBS does have a point, but for now I think our identity is safe from the reign of Facebook. I believe that Facebook is only a complimentary force in creating our identity rather than a controlling one.