Here’s a scenario…
It’s the morning of your birthday. You hear the post arrive through the door and rush out to gather up all the pretty pink, red, blue, green envelopes that are waiting for you on the door mat. Lovely cards picked out by friends and family who have been thoughtful enough to know your birthday is coming up, picked out a card with you in mind, and even found a stamp so it gets to you on the day of your birthday. The birthday card; a little indulgent treat to open while you enjoy your first cup of tea of the day (tea that presumably someone else has made for you, since it’s your birthday!).
But wait. This birthday morning there is but one card – from your mother of course – a utility bill and a bank statement. ‘Where are all my pretty envelopes?’ you cry at the departing postman who doesn’t even flinch as he walks away. He’s seen it all before.
So you chin up, walk it off like a brave soldier and head to work, where surely someone in your team will have remembered and perhaps even bought a cake. You’ve been dropping hints for days, so the odds look good. Turn on your PC, you have 87 new emails. How can that be right? You checked them last night at 9pm and it’s only 9am now! Sort by sender. 80 from Facebook. Facebook? That’s odd, you average about one interaction a day? You log in and see that everyone from your best friend, to your dentist, and of course your mother have posted on your wall ‘Happy birthday’… ‘Have a cracking day’… ‘Hope you have a wonderful birthday’. Ahhh that’s nice. People haven’t forgotten after all. Warm fuzzy feeling. Like.
It was one member of our team’s birthday this week and the day after her big day she recounted her tale, albeit in a slightly less Bridget Jones fashion than the one above, of having received a woeful lack of birthday cards. ‘Facebook has killed the birthday card’ she declared.
This launched us in to a conversation about people no longer feeling the need to remember birthdays as The Book of Dreams does it for them. They no longer feel the need to post a card as they can make a much more public declaration of well wishing on your wall. Where will this end, we wondered, will soon a private message on Facebook count for the same as a phone call? Does liking someone else’s birthday wishes count as having wished someone well yourself?
In short, no. This may seem shallow, and perhaps it is, but our feeling was that it’s all just a little bit too easy to say happy birthday to someone on Facebook. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it, just that it shouldn’t replace actually thinking about people and planning to do something nice for them. Now, those that remember to send a card gain more brownie points than ever before (well done, mum).
Interestingly, our debate on the death of the birthday card took an unexpected turn the following day. That morning, two days after her birthday, my colleague received a handful of birthday cards through the post, all with the post mark dated on the day of her birthday. Our hypothesis – people saw on Facebook that it was her birthday, and rushed to get a card in the post asap.
So perhaps Facebook is actually the saviour of the birthday card?
Blog post by Penny Anderson, Consultant at Reform



