There’s been a funny little trend going on in some of the moms groups I’m part of on Facebook. In 2021, Facebook rolled out anonymous posting for group members, which allowed people to post a question or comment to a group anonymously. In practice, what this means is that, if you elect to post anonymously, the name next to your query shows only as Anonymous Member. While this isn’t a new feature, in the groups that I’m part of, the number of posts by Anonymous Member has dramatically increased over the last 6-12 months.
Don’t get me wrong; I think the ability to post something under the mask of anonymity can have big benefits – say, when the question is related to a sensitive issue that the poster doesn’t yet want known to the public. But the range of anonymous posts lately is what’s puzzled me. Anonymous posts now run the gamut from the monumental (“my marriage is falling apart and I don’t know what to do” and “my child is being bullied and I’m not sure how to support them”) to the mundane (“what’s your favourite bra brand?” or “what’s the best low-interest credit card?”). Historically, the kinds of things you’d see in discussion in these groups would be anything from what diaper cream to buy to the best leak-proof water bottles to whether or not a particular rash warranted a visit to the doctor’s office, so the range of topics certainly seems to be broadening over time but it’s the anonymity that’s really caught my attention in recent months. To be sure, this is only based on my unscientific observation – I’m not sure how widespread this trend is beyond the groups I’m part of, and I do suspect that it’s informed by the norms and culture of the respective groups themselves. I’ve seen some group admins try to push back on anonymous posting by encouraging members to reserve anonymity for situations that really warrant it, since there’s value in putting your name to a post. Even in the relatively faceless realm of social media, transparency is an opportunity to build connection with other group members.
On the surface it might seem innocuous, innocent even, but I think it speaks to something bigger going on. The fact that some women feel compelled to post even mundane questions looking for recipe ideas or what to do about an issue with an Amazon delivery under the cloak of anonymity is confounding, and it makes me wonder whether there’s a real fear of being judged by others that might be driving some of this. And what of the women who are posting monumental questions about issues as consequential as whether or not they should leave their partner? I’ve wondered why these women would choose to post about such important issues to a forum of hundreds or – in some cases – thousands of faceless women, most of whom are likely unknown to them personally, and allow these strangers to weigh in on such important matters.
I’ve puzzled over what could be behind this trend, and a few things came to mind. First, we could (on some level) be looking for validation rather than actual advice in some scenarios. For example, if you’re having marital problems and you’re feeling unloved and unappreciated, you might be looking for someone (anyone) to just acknowledge your feelings. It’s completely understandable to want this kind of validation – we all need it from time to time, especially when we’re dealing with something heavy. And when we’re looking for validation it really means that we’re looking to feel seen and heard, so the rise in posts from the Anonymous Member may suggest that – for many of us – we’re feeling unseen or unheard in our personal lives.
The rise in anonymous posts might also then reflect a shift in women’s relationships with each other. For some of us (myself included), we might be finding that – in all of our busyness with family, work, and life – maintaining adult friendships has fallen by the wayside, and with COVID compounding the situation, we may be looking around at the remnants of our old friendships and not really finding anyone we can lean on for support.
It’s also possible that we’re all just cynical nowadays about social media – we’ve seen enough of cancel culture and online trolls to make us skittish about sharing too much of ourselves, being too honest, too transparent, too vulnerable.
But regardless of what’s fuelling this trend, it makes me wonder if this is really the best we can offer these women? The ability to pose questions namelessly and look for guidance from a largely faceless community? Whatever is behind it, I think it says something important about the state of human connection today. In some modern societies, and historically in communities the world over, groups of elders would be the ones solicited for advice and guidance to help us navigate life. Elders were the knowledge-keepers, the ones responsible for imparting important information about customs and traditions, how to survive, and how to navigate the confusing mysteries of big life changes. Elders would share those stories of survival, of withstanding, of fortitude to help get us through the lean times. For women, female elders would have helped to shepherd younger women through important life transitions like puberty, childbirth, and menopause. In many of our modern societies, over the course of the last few generations much of this shared wisdom has been lost and there’s been a sterilization of the knowledge that remains. Many of us don’t have elders to begin with – through family separation, dysfunction, or trauma, some of us simply don’t have older familial generations to lean on. Others lucky enough to have elders in their families might be confronted with the reality that certain topics like sex, relationships, puberty, and menopause were somewhere along the way deemed taboo, unsavory, and not fitting for discussion in polite society.
When conversations about important issues like this get stifled and choked off, we lose both key context and an opportunity to connect with others in a way that normalizes our experience. Talking about difficult stuff is also an opportunity to build trust through shared storytelling. It requires a level of vulnerability and honesty between both parties in the conversation. And making some topics unspeakable sends the message that other topics may themselves be out-of-bounds, which creates confusion for the asker and concern over making a misstep by inadvertently inquiring about something offside. More damaging, in not talking about important life events and transitions, we made them something to be feared. In all of this, I think many of us also lost knowledge about who we are and where we came from. When we stopped talking about important issues with other people, for many of us, we also stopped talking about our common experiences, including our lineage, our genealogy, and our family history – we became estranged from our communities and from our ancestors – how they lived and died, what they valued, what they endured – and we became, in the process, estranged from ourselves.
I think this trend toward anonymity also suggests something about what we’ve been led to believe in our culture – that we can succeed (or fail) on our own. When we stopped living as a collective and started embraced individualism, we stopped seeing the community as something that enabled human thriving. We were sold the notion that we could achieve anything if we just worked hard, muscled through, and pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. It’s really hard to admit that you don’t know the answer to something, nevermind to own up to the fact that you’re struggling and that a part of your life is falling apart. We’ve lost our sense of communal support and we’re left fumbling our way through, trying to navigate some really hard stuff with the tools we have at our disposal today. Social media is ubiquitous, and while it offers some advantages to bridging distance and keeping in touch, it’s a poor substitute for the kind of meaningful connection and support most of us could benefit from.
At some point in history, we decided as a culture that we could go it alone. This was a mistake. It left us isolated, unprepared, and unprotected. Without the intergenerational sharing of wisdom, we’ve lost a valuable coping mechanism and we’ve put an incredible burden on ourselves. We need to find connection and community and share our stories – to help us shed that burden and drop our masks.
