Is surfing Facebook the new high school reunion?

Last week my high school class held its ten-year reunion. From what I hear, out of a class of approximately 450 people, less than 30 attended. 30 people?!?! To be honest, I never even considered going. It just wasn’t something that sounded interesting to me for a variety of reasons, but when I heard how many of my fellow sultans seemed to share my sentiments I started thinking – what caused such low participation.

Now it’s entirely possible that a lot of people were busy, living out of town, couldn’t find a babysitter, weren’t a fan of the venue, or didn’t want to be reminded of what they looked like in high school with braces, but I would like to offer another possibility. Is it possible that social media, specifically Facebook had something to do with the low attendance? Think about, traditionally a reunion was a chance for everyone to scratch their nosy itch, and find out what everyone else was doing with their lives 10, 20, 30 years out of high school. You could find out who went to college, got married, got divorced, had children, loves their job, traveled the world, got plastic surgery, never grew up…the list goes on and on. But now, in today’s overly connected world, all you need is a Facebook account to learn all of this and much more (in some cases more than you EVER wanted to know).

So I throw the question out there – is social media changing school reunions? Have you attended or do you plan to attend your high school reunions? Do you think social media has made you feel differently about a reunion? Has Facebook mitigated the value of a reunion?