A good friend of mine recently delivered a baby. All of her friends (including me) were really excited for her and giving her lots of words of encouragement on her page of the social networking site to which she belongs.
She alerted everyone (via her page) that she was going into the hospital overnight and they would begin the process of having the baby the next day. Then she updated everyone that labor had begun. Several hours went by and there were no updates from her, and her friends started to get really anxious and nosy. One person posted (after several other comments), "She hasn't answered yet... is that a sign?", and another person posted later, "Anything yet????". Finally, someone posted, "The suspense is killing me." YES, the suspense is killing EVERYONE! The fact that the new mother didn't find out the gender of the baby (during her pregnancy) added to the suspense, but did all of these people need to constantly hound her to find out what's going on? The answer to that question is NO.
People, where are your manners? Give the woman some privacy! When she's ready to tell the world, she will do so. And she did (imagine that!). She posted a picture with the full name, length and weight of the baby once she was ready to snap a photo with her smartphone and update her social networking page. I can only imagine that she was completely exhausted after being in labor for what seemed to be about 6 or 7 hours, and once the baby was out I'm sure all she wanted to do was hold the baby and cuddle and get some private family time with her husband and her new baby. I can't even fathom the amount of text messages she probably received, in addition to the dozens of comments left on her page.
Encouraging comments (before) and exclamations of congratulations (after) are completely acceptable. Constantly trying to find out what's going on and insisting on finding out the status of the birth is unacceptable. NO ONE is entitled to this information until the family has decided that they are.
My two cents: It's just the nature of the beast if one chooses to share their life, especially private events, on a social networking site. There is no privacy and people shouldn't expect it.
ReplyDeleteIn this digital age, people are not expecting up-to-the-minute updates, but rather up-to-the-second.
The "moral" of this comment: if one doesn't want people up in their Scheiße -- skip the updates on social networking sites altogether and opt for the good old-fashioned phone call. As a person who is an acquaintance of the mother, I am well aware of the fact that she consistently provided updates as to her "progress" -- this, in my humble opinion, only encouraged the tactless individuals you mentioned in your post.
(P.S. Don't get me wrong -- people can be very nosy, rude, and tactless; however, let's not give them any fuel.)
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ReplyDeleteI was actually surprised how NOT bothered the new mother was regarding the posts by her friends! She later told me that she didn't mind it so much, but had it been me in that position I think I would have handled it a bit differently from the start.
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