An associate of mine who facilitates a divorce support group is also a “Friend” on Facebook.
Last week, I was sitting-in on one of her get-togethers, to assist with a challenging participant situation. In her role as their facilitator, she weighed-in on a discussion with a rather personal story of her own at one point, to make an empathetic connection.
By way of preamble, the facilitator said the details of what she would share were quite embarrassing, and portended possible legal consequence for the person specifically involved. So she wasn’t going to disclose the person’s name in this effectively public discussion group. “Everything else is factually true, however.”
Somewhere in the midst of her recitation, the facilitator repeated her often-made praise of Facebook as a social networking site for divorcing and divorced individuals. Why, right in this very story she was sharing, it had been the key to her ability to help this heretofore anonymous person.
“If it weren’t for Facebook, I wouldn’t have had a chance to help this person in the first place,” she advocated. “Thankfully the individual had this ability to reach out to me with a ‘Friend Request’ last Tuesday.”
Yikes!
As the facilitator and I debriefed privately after, I reminded her that she and I are “Friends” on Facebook. She’s also a Friend with almost everyone else in her sixteen-person divorce support group.
So, anyone who’d heard that story tonight and was interested, could look back to Tuesday on the facilitator’s Facebook record, putting two-plus-two together. For that matter, some algorithm within Facebook itself might initiate a close-the-loop-on-her-story introduction, provided that a not-unlikely set of matching criteria were met.
Off-Site Reference
“Have you thought about what your affiliations reveal?” / August 12, 2009 / Michigan Divorce Mediation (accessed August 9, 2024)