‘ My neighbor is making cupcakes with her 8-month-old daughter.
My high school English teacher is wishing her babies a happy second birthday.
A colleague is glad that his 4-year-old can buckle and unbuckle his seatbelt ‘- all by himself!
And I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Pardon the ‘Dodgeball’ reference, but seriously, guys. Remember when you needed a college e-mail address to sign up for a Facebook account? Those were the good old days ‘- the days when the newly born ‘social networking site’ was a safe haven for tasteless wall posts, inappropriate photos and good, old-fashioned moral debauchery.
Lately, though, the 30-somethings have noticed what they missed by only a decade:’ communicating on the Internet. Maybe they feel left out. After all, what happened in the ’90s besides Kurt Cobain and Beanie Babies?
Unfortunately, they’re taking control of Facebook with an unprecedented obsession. It’s almost like they’re making up for lost time, with my news feed dominated by the most unlikely cross-section of friends and minor acquaintances. And really, it’s not only 30-somethings and it’s not only baby posts. I’m talking professors, co-workers, aunts, uncles, my mom’s dentist’s friend’s hairdresser’s brother ‘- people whose private lives I never had the slightest interest in learning about.
I don’t care about your baby’s first step.
I don’t want to hear about your wife snoring, your 401(k) shrinking or what you’re preparing for dinner tonight.
You don’t like your in-laws, and neither do I.
Beyond that, I’ve never had the slightest interest in these people learning about my private life, and I get a mini-anxiety attack with every new wall post that contains questionable content. I don’t like to guess which one of my aunts is going to tell my mom about the poor decisions I made this weekend. I also worry about professors, and co-workers are in the uppermost tier of the ‘Holy crap I hope you don’t see this’ scale.
Mostly, though, I just don’t post things anymore. That’s the advice Northeastern gave me at my freshman orientation, frightening me with the horror story of graduate and former Resident Student Association President Smith Anderson, who was photographed running around in his birthday suit. The photo was later posted on Facebook and viewed by then-university President Richard Freeland.
Later that day, I privatized all of my photos.
But frankly, censorship sucks. It’s just not as fun. I like making tongue-in-cheek wall posts and I get a kick out of flipping through my friends’ ridiculous pictures. We’re in college. We’re supposed to have fun, right?
Not when the 30-somethings are around — and especially not when your co-workers are adding you as friends faster than you can say ‘untag.’ Facebook has become a platform for little more than baby photos, engagement invitations and status updates about diaper changes, and it’s bumming me out.
No pun intended.

‘- Maggie Cassidy is a middler journalism major
and member of The News staff.