Facebook = Good?

This afternoon, shortly after I returned home from work, I was cruising facebook, checking up on all the usual things: new feed, notifications, status updates. Then something caught my attention and held it: my uncle's status had been updated two hours before to : "praying for his sister's step-son and daughter-in-law because of a family tragedy." "Huh?" I thought. That was my aunt and cousins he was talking about! What did he mean? I immediately picked up my cell phone and called my mom.

"Hey, Mom," I asked urgently, "has anything happened to Jason or Michael (my aunt's two step-sons)?"

"No," she answered cautiously. "Not that I know of, at least. Why?" I explained about the facebook thing.

"Let me call your aunt and find out," she said, and we hung up. A few minutes later, my mom called me back with the news.

"Apparently Jennifer (Jason's wife) was dropping off their children and her mother's house. She thought they were all inside, but apparently their youngest daughter, Caroline (who's about 18 months) wasn't. She was behind the car, and Jennifer hit her when she was trying to leave."

"Oh my God!" I said.

"She's still alive, but she has some pretty bad injuries. They've sent her to San Antonio to be under the care of a pediatric neurosurgeon."

So, that's how I found out today that my cousin had accidentally hit her baby daughter with a car. And it was all because of facebook. I doubt i would have found that out until tomorrow if not for that little status update by my uncle.

It's kinda weird how a simple web tool like facebook has the power to connect us like that. Is it good? Today, sure. All the time, though? It's actually a little unsettling to think about how much information we give to other people completely unintentionally. Anyway, today I was really glad that my old fogey family members decided to join facebook. It's good to be in the know.