Facebook’s ‘On this Day’ feature reminds people of memories they’d rather forget

It started out with good intentions. Facebook created a feature called “On this Day” that reminds users what they had posted a year ago, two years ago, etc. The prior year posts are flagged in your newsfeed, and you can choose whether to share them with your friends or keep it private.

While no doubt the idea was to remind people of happy memories, such as births, weddings and family vacations, for some of us, our Facebook timelines are filled with depressing posts.

A Facebook “On this Day” moment capturing my mom’s crazy shopping list.

If you are a long-term family caregiver, your timeline may look more like a roller coaster of memories, with good, bad and the ugly all present.

I’ve ran into a few issues with prior posts that brought up memories of my mother, and that summer of 2012 when she was recovering from cancer. There have also been some “On this Day” posts featuring departed pets. Not always the thing you want to greet you as you start your day.

Being on Facebook is a part of my job so I cannot simply ignore it.

As it turns out, other Facebook users were also having a bittersweet experience with this new feature, so now there is a filter option. Users can filter out names and/or periods of time to skip over painful memories like deaths and divorces.

If only it were that easy to filter out bad memories in real life. Still, I believe that the ups and downs of life are all part of the experience of being a human being. While I am glad Facebook added the filter feature, I haven’t actually used it yet.

If I was strong enough to survive the actual experience, I can also survive the memories.