[bozzauto]

f you've been on Facebook for more than three years, you might remember the good old days when you logged on simply to see if your roommate did something cool over the weekend. Back when status updates simply kept everyone, you know, up to date. "At first, updates were a more efficient way of sharing the normal stuff you'd talk about with friends—and really, only your friends were reading them," says media expert Steven Johnson, author of the best seller Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.

But then our "friend" networks mushroomed, and suddenly our news feeds were logjammed with the banal hourly banter of people we hardly knew—and they weren't just posting for their friends, but for an audience. "Paradoxically, as people's social networks have grown, they have become less cautious and more brazen," says Johnson, adding, "I think it's the shy crowd that is finding the most gleeful freedom posting on Facebook. They can say anything, stuff they've never dared talk about before! It's quite a thrill."

Behold: the birth of the Facebook overshare.