Facebook Reunites Long-Lost Family Members

This article illustrates one of the ways in which Facebook functions not only as a recreational networking tool, but also as a means for bringing about great change in individual lives. In this instance, lost siblings were able to find each other after 37 years of separation, and after years of failed attempts, by utilizing the medium of Facebook. Facebook has become significant to the public in a way that transcends the more obvious functions of status updates and friend requests; it allows people to connect in ways that their resources previously might have prohibited. For Steve Inman, the cost to even begin the search for Sally (his sister, believed to have disappeared in Korea) was $30,000. Costs would increase once the investigation was underway. The social networking site allowed the Inman family to sidestep these prohibitive costs, serving as an equal platform where all users are able to connect with one another regardless of their financial state. It is also worth considering that both Sally and Steve independently decided to utilize Facebook to locate each other, indicating that the site is considered so universal and ubiquitous that they each thought it would be worth trying.

[Sally Blue on Skype, with her biological mother Diane Drinkwine in the foreground.
The pair were reunited through Facebook after Sally's brother, Steve, used the platform
to make a page about her disappearance.]

While the details of their story may have been unique, Sally and Steve were not the first family to be reunited by the social networking platform. Elliott Cox actually hired a private investigator, but after much expense was still unable to locate his missing niece. 22 years after he last saw her, Facebook reunited them. After much frustration and years of going through the 'proper channels', Allan Silberstein found his sister through Facebook by running a simple search for her name. The family had been separated by the Holocaust 25 years ago. Facebook has also reunited adopted children with their birth parents, and parents with children lost during a separation from their partner. Facebook has even helped locate children kidnapped by strangers, such as in the case of Carlina White, who was abducted from a hospital at just 9 days old.

Clearly, Facebook can be more than just a way to broadcast the intricacies and mundane details of our daily lives. Can anyone else think of similar situations, where something as seemingly trivial as Facebook has forever changed the lives of its users?