Did you hear the news? Facebook’s expecting! Just when we can’t handle yet another pregnancy announcement, we find out that our beloved social network has potentially millions of buns in the oven.
Facebook added this new “Expecting” feature with virtually no notice to their users earlier this month. Facebook users can now add to their profile family members… who are in utero.
I’m on the fence about this feature, I won’t lie. My gut reaction when I first read about this was one of disdain. Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, maybe the “Expecting” feature isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Why Facebook’s “Expecting” Feature Sucks
Dodging the Announcement Bullet(s)
Facebook is a pregnancy, birth, and ultrasound photo minefield for an infertile person. We are right smack in the middle of Baby Birthin’ Season too, so the deluge of newborn photos are bound to flood our friend feeds right now.
As if we didn’t have enough to gingerly step around, Facebook now adds yet another mine in our virtual path as we’re just trying to get the quick scoop on our friends’ lives online. Believe me, I know how hard it can be to feel like everyone else is getting pregnant but you, and Facebook’s “Expecting” feature only rubs more salt in the wound.
Loss Happens
The Facebook “Expecting” feature also brings up the big white elephant in the room. Perhaps because our community is acutely attuned to chemical pregnancies, miscarriage, and stillbirth that this new feature seems like a risky gamble to commit to this “Expected” status online. We know that loss does indeed happen… think about how the mother-to-be would feel to have to change that status, to add to her pain already? Worse yet – what about a stillbirth?
Superstitious or not, announcing a pregnancy prior to the second trimester is a risky chance to take, especially on a platform as broad as Facebook’s.
Assigning Personhood
I have to step in and don my political hat for a moment. I’m particularly uncomfortable with the “Expected” feature on Facebook because it inadvertently assigns personhood status to children in utero. Remember, from a political perspective, assigning personhood status to an embryo or fetus is a threat to third-party reproduction, something many infertile people rely on to build their families.
I think what really doesn’t sit well is that a human life has been casually relegated to a Facebook relationship status. It feels trite and flippant.
Why Facebook’s “Expected” Feature Might Not Suck
- Mashable notes that this feature keeps folks from violating Facebook’s Terms of Service when they create profile pages for their unborn children.
- After that initial sting of seeing the announcement, it’s suddenly even easier to click that “Hide” button for those people from whom you just can’t bear to see continued pregnancy status updates for the next nine months.
- Hopefully a downtick in those “creative” pregnancy announcements. Maybe less of the lone pee stick and first ultrasound photo shots?
- Should we be so blessed to resolve, another interesting and quick way to share the news with our friends.
- …? Yeah, that’s about all I’ve got.
Okay, so maybe this “Expected” feature just rubs the ALI community a little raw, maybe strikes that nerve a little too much for us.
What do you think about Facebook’s new “Expected: Child” feature?
PS – Want to read more about social media? Check out my featured post on BlogHer today!
Well, it annoys me. For years people have been trying to get them to add categories for step-parents and stepchildren, along with foster parents and foster children. Families are quite complex, and it’d be good if Facebook would just add a few lines of programming to help reflect that. As it is there’s all sorts of drama for some over whom they can list as family and how. And, on some level, I wonder if it’s not that tons of people wanted that feature, but rather that it makes it that much easier to see whom should be getting the baby product ads. With pregnancy tickers, easy post images and even professional pregnancy announcement e-cards, it’s not like it’s hard to tell the internet that you’re expecting.
I think the feature is really, really odd. And kinda Big Brother-esque…
Someone on Twitter said a FB friend keeps posting what her cravings are, then logs in as her unborn child and “likes” the cravings. WTF?!
The “hide” function is useful.
Um… Dubya. Tee. Eff. That is a level of cray-cray that even surprises me. Wow.
And yes, it does feel a little Big Brother-ish. I don’t need FB all up in my ute.
You pretty much summed up all my feelings on the issue.
Lol, glad I could help 🙂
Eh, I dunno. I don’t like posting every intimate detail about my life on FB to begin with – I have no idea how they’ll use the information, or whether there will ever be a security leak on that site (don’t think it’ll never happen, folks!), and the people who need to know what’s up with me already know. I don’t feel the need to blast my 100+ “friends” with a lot of things, even this. And I could if I wanted to. But I don’t. So I won’t.
I’ve been increasingly more and more selective with what I post on FB. Hell, I even had my address up there until I was like, “yeah, not such a good idea when FourSquare posts to my page and tells the burglars where and when to go.”