The 847 Unread Messages in My Book Club Chat (and Other Social Media Confessions)
Eight hundred and forty-seven unread messages sit in my book club's Facebook group chat. Eight hundred and forty-seven. The little red notification bubble has been haunting me for three weeks, perched on my phone screen like a tiny digital accusation. Opening it hasn't happened because the last time it did, Sheila and Bev were arguing about whether we should read Demon Copperhead or Tom Lake, and by the time all the opinions had been scrolled through, the actual vote was over and we were already on to the next book.
Welcome to my life on social media. A 72-year-old woman with accounts on four platforms, understanding approximately 60 percent of what's happening on any of them at any given time.
Frank thinks social media is a waste of time. Frank also spent 45 minutes last Tuesday watching a man restore a 1967 Mustang on YouTube, which he does not consider social media because "it's educational." (It is not educational. It is a man with a sandblaster and a beard.)
But the pull is real. And worth explaining.
Facebook: Where Everyone You've Ever Known Finds You
Facebook entered my life in 2011 because Carrie said it was the only way to see photos of my grandchildren. She was right. It was also, as it turned out, the only way to encounter the political opinions of every person from Northwestern, but we'll get to that.
The thing about Facebook when you're over 70 is how it becomes this bizarre time machine. Former students from New Trier have reconnected with me, people now in their 50s with teenagers of their own, teenagers who are, presumably, explaining the internet to them with the same exasperated patience Emma extends to me. My old colleague Donna Wieczorek turned up on there after almost nine years of silence. She'd moved to Tucson. We had coffee within the month. That doesn't happen without Facebook. It just doesn't.
But Facebook is also where Frank's golf clubs accidentally ended up on Marketplace. The goal was selling an end table — Carrie had talked me through it on the phone, step by step, like defusing a bomb. Somehow a second listing appeared with a photo of Frank's Callaways from the insurance inventory. A man named Lyle in Mesa offered $400 before the mistake even registered. Frank, bless his heart, didn't speak to me for the rest of the afternoon, which honestly was kind of peaceful.
The Facebook basics are straightforward enough. It's everything else that gets complicated. The birthday notifications alone could be a part-time job. Facebook tells me it's someone's birthday every single day, and half the time it's someone from a conference in 1998. Do you write "Happy Birthday!"? Add an exclamation point? Two? Include a personal note acknowledging you haven't spoken to this person in 26 years? These are the questions keeping me up at night. Well. These and my hip.
The Privacy Settings You Actually Need to Change
Can we talk about what happened to Connie? Connie is in my book club — lovely woman, retired pediatric nurse, makes an excellent banana bread. Last March, her account got hacked. One morning, everyone in her friends list got a message from "Connie" saying she'd found an incredible investment opportunity in cryptocurrency and could she have our bank routing numbers.
Now, the real Connie once described Bitcoin as "Monopoly money for people who don't go outside." But Trudy almost clicked the link. Trudy!
After that scare, an entire Saturday afternoon went to changing my privacy settings. Tom walked me through it on FaceTime, very patient, which for Tom is practically a declaration of love. Here's what actually matters:
- Set your profile to "Friends Only." Go to Settings, then Privacy. Change "Who can see your future posts" from Public to Friends. This one thing eliminates about 80 percent of the problems.
- Turn off friend requests from strangers. Under "How People Find and Contact You," set "Who can send you friend requests" to "Friends of Friends."
- Review your tagged photos. Under Timeline and Tagging, turn on the setting letting you approve posts you're tagged in before they appear. This got turned on after Bev tagged me in a photo from the HOA pool party where my face looked like it was melting.
- Check your login alerts. Under Security and Login, turn on notifications for unrecognized logins. If someone in Romania tries to log into your account at 3 AM, you'll know.
- Do a Privacy Checkup. Facebook actually has a tool for this — click the question mark icon and select "Privacy Checkup." It walks you through everything. Even a self-described technophobe could follow it.
Write your passwords down. The internet says not to. Too bad. My nightstand has a notebook with every password, written in pen, organized alphabetically. Emma calls it "a security nightmare." Standing in the CVS pharmacy line trying to remember whether my Facebook password has a capital letter or an ampersand while the pharmacist waits — now that is a security nightmare.
Pinterest: 200 Recipes I Will Never Cook
My Pinterest account has seven boards. One is called "Senior Recipes" and has 200 pins on it. Exactly four of those recipes have been cooked. The other 196 remain pinned, a permanent monument to the woman this retirement was supposed to produce — the woman who makes her own pasta, grows herbs on her windowsill, and has strong opinions about parchment paper.
Instead, there is DoorDash on Wednesdays. (Don't judge me.)
But Pinterest is actually useful, and worth defending. It's the one platform not trying to make you argue with anyone. Nobody's posting political opinions on Pinterest. Nobody's getting hacked and messaging you about cryptocurrency. It's just pictures of things — recipes, garden layouts, bathroom tile patterns, organized into neat little folders. Like a magazine you build yourself.
The trick with Pinterest is to actually use the boards you create instead of just pinning things and walking away like you're dropping breadcrumbs for a future version of yourself who has more free time. Mine got reorganized last month: three empty boards deleted, "Dinner Ideas" merged with "Things to Cook Someday" (the same board with different levels of ambition), and one recipe now gets opened a week. Progress.
LinkedIn: A Mystery Wrapped in a Resume
My LinkedIn profile exists. Nobody knows why, including me.
Tom set it up in 2016 because maintaining "a professional presence" was supposedly important. Retirement from teaching started in 2014. My professional presence consists of buying printer ink at Staples and arguing with the HOA about the mailbox situation. But Tom is Tom, so now a LinkedIn profile says "Educator | Lifelong Learner | Passionate About Student Success" with a headshot from Carrie's 40th birthday party where a glass of wine is clearly being held just outside the frame.
Every few weeks, LinkedIn sends an email: "Victoria, you appeared in 3 searches this week." Who are these people? What are they searching for? Mysteries best left uninvestigated.
What Nobody Tells You About Social Media After 70
Here's the thing about being on social media at my age. The articles about "seniors and social media" always frame it as this brave, slightly adorable thing — look at Grandma, she figured out the Facebook! Studies show more seniors are joining every year, reported like we've all collectively learned to use a dishwasher for the first time.
What nobody mentions is how social media after 70 is a completely different experience than social media at 30. At 30, you're performing a version of your life. At 72, caring about performance simply stops. Posting happens when it happens. Filters don't enter the equation. The best time to post for "engagement" is not a calculation worth making. A photo of Frank asleep on the couch with the cat on his chest went up at 9:47 PM on a Tuesday because it was funny and Carrie needed to see it. Sixteen people liked it. Plenty.
The downside is the firehose of things you didn't ask for. Phil from my 1975 Psych 101 class sharing his thoughts on immigration policy every morning at 6 AM was not requested, and yet here we are. Ads for funeral insurance, mobility scooters, and something called a "walk-in tub" every time the phone opens. Also not requested. The algorithm has decided its audience is elderly. The audience is elderly. But reminders every 30 seconds are unnecessary.
You can mute people without unfriending them, something worth knowing three years and several uncomfortable Thanksgivings ago. On Facebook, click the three dots on someone's post and select "Snooze for 30 days." It's the digital equivalent of nodding politely and walking to the other end of the party.
If you're just getting comfortable with technology in general, start with one platform. Just one. Facebook is the obvious choice because it's where your people already are. Get comfortable before adding anything else. And if your family is already treating you like the IT department, at least make them earn it by helping you set up your profile first.
The Part That Actually Matters
The plan was to end this with something witty about my 847 unread messages. The line was ready. But then Donna Wieczorek came to mind.
Donna taught AP History in the room next door at New Trier for twelve years. We ate lunch together almost every day. Then she moved in 2015, same year we left for Scottsdale, and we just... lost each other. No fight, no falling out. Just life, doing what life does when you're not paying attention.
Her profile turned up on Facebook on a Sunday night — lying in bed scrolling, which is something Emma says is "terrible for your circadian rhythm." Donna's photo was her standing in front of a saguaro cactus. She was less than two hours away. We've had lunch four times since. She still laughs at the same things.
That's the part that matters. Not the Marketplace mishaps or the 200 unpinned recipes or Phil's immigration posts. The people you thought you'd lost turn out to be right there, one search bar away, waiting for you to type their name and press enter.
So yes. 847 unread messages. A LinkedIn profile nobody understands. A Pinterest board made mostly of aspirational fiction. And Donna back.
I'll take the trade.
