It was part of Gardner’s series of 30-day challenges for 2011:
First, I realized that for all of their flaws, these social sites provide a means of communication with family that’s far away, and that’s something I missed quite a lot. My family doesn’t live nearby, so I kept asking my wife what was going on with family members and she’d show me pictures from Facebook. I also had lots of video and photos of Ethan and our family capers that I wanted to share, and Facebook makes that easy.
However, I also learned that a good deal of what I share on social sites is petty and inconsequential. Not that that’s a bad thing—a lot of our real-life socializing is made up of unimportant exchanges. But I realized how much noise I really generate. Every time I felt the need to post something, I’d jot it down on a running list I was keeping. When reviewing the list, I noticed that much of what felt important and worth sharing with the world at the time really wasn’t.