Let’s say, just for the sake of this discussion, that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will be around for another couple of decades. Let them survive with all the content they’ve amassed for long enough for our kids to grow up so they can browse back dozens of years. Imagine a child at, let’s say, 16 years old being able to see what their parents posted to social media when they were 16… Does that scare you?

Maybe you should try and go back as far as you can on your own Facebook and Twitter timelines. Many of us have been posting and sharing random things for many years now. You’ll have a good laugh when you rediscover some of the dumb things you’ve posted that are still floating around the internet. You might even want to delete some stuff. Maybe that’s a good idea. I’m not going to stop you.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because I just recently became a father. I’ve also been actively using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube since around 2007… And I must disclose, not really every single post or tweet is exactly genius. I’m just curious what my daughter will think of me when she becomes old enough to have her own Facebook or Twitter account and starts snooping through daddy’s old timelines. It’s different with kids and parents on Facebook now. Those parents got on social media websites already being parents. I can’t see my parents’ youth on social media… I can’t really find it anywhere except in old family photos, etc. That’s not really the same thing.

If you’re reading this, and you’re still young and far away from having your own children, will you think twice now about posting your random ideas and thoughts? Or will you more actively post and tweet, so that future generations can get a better idea of who you were?

All this is assuming Facebook and Twitter actually survive for that long.