Facebook will celebrate its 20th anniversary on February 4, 2024. The largest social network has changed a lot in two decades. It also changed our lives. There is no shortage of proof.
Antoine (fictitious name) and his girlfriend are probably among the happiest people on Facebook. Like many other single Internet users, the two young people from Montérégie met thanks to its online dating service. A story that looks like a small ray of sunshine in the grayness that Facebook seems to have become in 2024, where divisive opinion messages, omnipresent advertising and unwanted content occupy more and more space.
We write “Montérégie” as if Antoine and his future girlfriend were likely to bump into each other one morning at the grocery store, but that’s not it. At the time they met virtually, they lived 25 miles apart. Five years separate them too, an eternity when you’re in your twenties. They didn’t have any mutual friend profiles on Facebook either.
In short, this story is a bit like a fairy tale. After four months of courting each other via chat, the two lovers put their fears of meeting in person aside and organized a first “real” date. The chemistry worked. A year later, they bought their first house together and have been enjoying complete happiness ever since, in the company of their two dogs.
“Among my friends, I am the only one who has had success meeting people on Facebook,” says Antoine. I sometimes feel like relationships that start online are less likely to last. I consider us a bit of an exception to this rule. »
“Without Facebook, I wouldn’t have my girlfriend, or my house, or my dogs. »
Social and… community
Over time, we may have forgotten it a little, but that’s what Facebook is, recalls professor of the Department of Social and Public Communication at UQAM Mélanie Millette. “Basically, it remains a social network. It must be said again: we go there to meet new people or friends we have lost sight of. It remains an effective public square. »
Naturally, over 20 years, everyone changes at least a little. Facebook has transformed quite significantly since its inception in 2004, making it a platform that is likely more than just the social network it was in its early days.
The addition of private groups from 2010 brought a new dimension to the social network. It created another way to find knowledge lost in the mist. Live from Vancouver, Brigitte Gemme was able to bring together with a few friends almost all the members of the cohort she was part of at her high school… in Saint-Hubert. They thus organize reunions on a regular basis.
“I’m not a big fan of the company, but the network is still good,” she says. The groups had an interesting community aspect, but Facebook had to devalue them because people abused them. It’s a shame, because it’s a good way to keep in touch. Groups are like a meeting of neighbors from the same building, except that you can stay anywhere in the world. »
In 2024, like everything else on Facebook, groups aren’t what they used to be. People abused it. Companies have overused them for their marketing.
But we can still use Facebook like in the old days, before the social network became the huge platform it is today. Brigitte Gemme and Mélanie Millette use the same expression to explain the lasting success of Facebook: phatic communication. It’s a contact that we can keep passively with people we don’t want to lose sight of.
“Facebook is imperfect, but it still works,” concludes Brigitte Gemme, who is planning a new reunion evening for her former classmates through her Facebook group.