Facebook’s 10th Birthday: 5 Things Every 10-year-old Should Know

Turning 10 is a huge milestone.  It’s the first time you feel a little more ‘grown-up.’  At 10, though, there are some lessons you should have learned.  As we celebrate the 10^th birthday of Facebook, I thought it would be nice to remind our favorite 10-year-old of some of the things they should have already learned:

1. Just Because You LIKE Someone Today . . . doesn’t mean you will like them forever.  It’s just our nature to fall in and out of like with things, people, places and ideas.  Just because someone doesn’t LIKE you anymore, doesn’t mean they are insulting you – it just means you’ve moved apart a little more.

2. Keep Your Friends’ Secrets . . . and you will have a friend forever.  It’s never a good idea to share secrets that someone has trusted you with.  To keep a friend, you need to keep their secrets.  That includes things like age, location, text messages, passwords . . .you keep my secrets, we’ll be friends forever.

3. Just Because You’re 10, Doesn’t Mean You Know Everything . . . although this attitude gets worse with teenager-hood, it starts early.  Sometimes, though, it’s important to admit when you’ve made a mistake or that you’re not sure of something.  For instance, if you didn’t really think that giving my personal information to a 3^rd party without my permission might make me mad . . . you don’t know everything.  And, when you do over-step . . . a nice apology goes a long way.

4. Yes, You CAN Be Too Popular and Too Cool so make sure you pay attention to your ‘uncool’ friends who have been with you a long time.  If you pay too much attention to fads and trends, you’ll be the 30-year-old with the high school picture everyone laughs at.  You’ve seen it happen already to others so making sure you respect your elders and can still talk with the cool kids will get you pretty far.

5. Spend Your Allowance Wisely and always remember the rule of three:  spend a little, give a little and save a little.  If you can remember that at 10, you’ll live that the rest of your life.  It will keep you from having emergencies you can’t handle, it will give you the opportunity to help others and it will make your decisions about the future, not the present.