Social media dependency – an experiment

People are getting more and more dependent on social media, like Facebook. A minority(?) is downright addicted to social media, but the large majority of people do rely on them for reviews, opinions, and other information.

How large that majority is, you may ask? Well, I figured my birthday was a good way to test how dependent people have gotten on Facebook.
Every year I always get boatloads of ‘Happy Birthday’ wishes on Facebook on my birthday, as do you probably. I decided to do a little experiment to find out how many people would actually remember my birthday without being reminded of it by Facebook.
So a day before the 24th I made my birthdate visible to only me on Facebook, which kept Facebook from reminding my friends of the annual event.
Lo and behold, when I woke up on the 24th there were 0 birthday wishes waiting for me on Facebook! Between the start of the 24th (UTC+14:00) and around 14:00 (CEST) (when I re-enabled the visibility of my birthday to my friends), I got less than 5 ‘Happy Birthday’ wishes! They included a couple of family members, someone who has his birthday on the same day as me, and someone who has the birthday exactly 1 week before mine. Only 1 person I’m not sure of how she remembered my birthday. Perhaps she’s old-fashioned and has a paper-based birthday calendar hanging in the crapper, like people used to when I was young(er)…
After 14:00 a few birthday wishes arrived via Facebook, most likely from people who visited the site (Facebook reminds people there of their friends birthdays during the whole day, unlike the reminder the app sends out in the morning.

Any eye-opener? Hardly. More like exactly what I expected.

If you’re willing to copy my little experiment, don’t hesitate to share your experiences here with the rest of us.

1 thought on “Social media dependency – an experiment”

  1. Giving it another try today. The result is disappointing/as expected: very few people, including close connections either don’t know about my birthday, or simply don’t care… 😎

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