Facebook or Traditional Photo Albums to Preserve Your Precious Memories?

With the era of the internet and the amount of time people spend on Facebook and other social networks, it's easy to become engrossed in this new way to communicate with others by living out our lives online. Many Facebook users upload recent photos to their profiles to share them with their Facebook friends and to show people what's new in their lives. Since Facebook has revolutionized the way we interact and share photos, it is very easy to make printing photos secondary or forget to print them entirely. While I understand why it is more advantageous to upload photos to Facebook first, we must not forget that overtime having prints and photo albums to recall and cherish the past will be much more important to us. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that we put as much if not more importance on printing photos than we do on uploading them to Facebook.

There are several reasons that we prioritize uploading photos to Facebook before printing them. Mainly, we just want to share photos to show people what we're doing, to show off our children, or to share the photos from a recent vacation, to name a few. These photos aren't just about your life right now; they are memories that should not be lost in the black hole that is the billions of photos on Facebook. Facebook is a forum to share your life with others. It is not a place to keep treasured memories.

Would you only put important photos such as your wedding photos on Facebook without printing them? Believe it or not, some people do! It's not intentional, but a photographer gives them a disc of their photos and they upload them to Facebook and just never print them. Of course, they will definitely get around to it one day, right? You would be surprised. The same goes for any other sentimental photos that you put on Facebook. If people aren't printing their wedding photos, then it goes without saying that they aren't thinking about printing a random photo they took of their baby either. After all, "it was just to show to people on Facebook anyway, wasn't it?"

Although it is perfectly fine to put your cherished photos on Facebook, it is without question a mistake to let them get lost among the candid, silly, or virtually meaningless photos that you also post. Facebook photos are for quick viewing so that your friends can keep up with your life. This is of course very important, but you must be careful not to become too consumed with this way of experiencing photos that you forget they are also invaluable memories to be treasured and protected.