I just had this thought as I was trolling around on Facebook, looking at photos of people I know. Everyone looks so happy in their photos. People post so many photos of happy memories, pictures of their kids and spouses and pets. You can view their relationship status, too, whether they’re married or divorced or single or in a relationship or other.

It makes me wonder what kind of impact this will have on us socially as a whole. If we continue to publicize our private lives, how will that affect us when things in our private lives sour? If a person gets a divorce, will they feel shame and embarrassment when they change their Facebook status? Will they delete all the public photos depicting happier, married times, and de-friend their ex-spouse? Will they de-friend their ex-spouse’s mutual friends? And what about all the questions that will inevitably come their way? Not everyone possesses perfect etiquette all the time, especially when a tidbit of juicy gossip presents itself.

Will people instead revert back to the times when communities were closer-knit? Will the divorce rate actually go down because people will feel a subtle pressure to keep up appearances, even if it’s just to their electronic circle of friends?

I remember the first time I was spotted in public with Stefan by a mutual friend of my ex-husband’s. Stefan had called me up and managed to convince me to go out to a party with him. I was very newly separated at the time, but not divorced. Keep in mind that the divorce was initiated by me. I was pretty depressed that day but once we got to the party, I began to enjoy myself.  Then I spotted her. She used to work with my now ex-husband, and she and her husband and me and my ex-husband went to dinner together once. Although there were a lot of people at the party and I managed to avoid her for most of the evening, we ended up hanging around the bonfire. I didn’t know if she recognized me in the dark or not, but I definitely recognized her. Stefan and I left shortly thereafter, because I didn’t want to be recognized. I figured she probably hadn’t heard the news, and I was afraid she might contact my ex with some idea that I was cheating on him with another man. Things were complicated enough already.

The next day, I got an email from her out of the blue. She had questions. I filled her in on the parts she didn’t know and was relieved she’d reached out to me first to get the story. But it was pretty weird.

If I thought that was weird, what would a divorce over Facebook be like, where you can’t control the flow of misinformation and gossip nearly as well as seeing one person at a party, especially if up ‘til now, your Facebook page tells a story of love and happiness and fairy-tale endings and all things good and sugary? I mean, nobody wants to put up pictures of their unflattering moments. Nobody wants to discuss their problems. How much of this is reminiscent of the 1950’s, I wonder? We are strangely fond of our fair-weather electronic friends. Facebook has the huge potential to be the Gossip Freight Train, much more so than a single busy-body in a small town.  And while divorce does not have the same aura of taboo around it as it once had, it still does ring of negativity, which seems to be something to avoid at all costs. All things negative tend to get shunned when a name can be attached to them.  I lost a lot of friends when I got divorced. Imagine losing 90% of your digital friends. Imagine that 90% of your social network is comprised of digital friends. You’d feel pretty alone, wouldn’t you? Thus the subtle social pressure to put on the happy shiny face to the world and pretend problems don’t exist, and just find a way to live with them instead of dealing with them.