High school students act brave, but if anything can put us cowering in corner in a matter of seconds, it’s the past.  It’s the idea that thousands of people will be able to see what our lives once consisted of.  One website now carries the story of our lives, and what once was a hidden mess of wall posts and statuses has now become organized and accessible.  In the end, we fear Facebook.

If there is one thing I have noticed in all my years on Facebook it is that people are very opposed to change.  Facebook has seeped its way into billions of lives, and when the web design changes it’s like your parents redecorated your bedroom while you were away at camp, and sure it’s more sophisticated now, but you liked your Beanie Babies. Not that I remember what the site was first like when I created my account, but I remember longing for it after the first of many changes that would follow.  And so, every time the highly popular website has been redesigned an uproar ensues.  This time is no exception.Facebook is becoming a documentation of life as we know it, whether its users want it to be or not.

The new changes, named Timeline, have been optional for about a month now.  If you have been totally out of the loop, here is a break down of the real differences:

• Instead of just having a the normal profile picture, users now have banners at the top of their page as well (very MySpace-esque).
• When people post on each others walls (now called your Timeline) the posts do not go straight down, but instead have a confusing two to a column type deal that makes no sense chronologically.  Of all the new things, this is the least aesthetically pleasing.
• But here’s the creepiest, most “1984”-like part: People who can see your page (Friends, friends of friends, everybody?  I don’t know your privacy settings, but if I was you, I would change them.) now have the ability to see back to the beginning of when you first got your Facebook.

That’s right, those weird music quotes you posted in 7th grade?  Those ugly pictures that have been buried under thousands of other ones?  The posts that your grade school friends put on your wall?  It will now only take a matter of seconds for any one of the hundreds of people you call “friends” to see all of that.  Embarrassed yet? Luckily for you, Zuckerburg and Co. are giving the users of Facebook exactly one week after attaining Timeline to clean up their acts.  So if you’re nervous about potential colleges or places of employment seeing any of those things, it’s time to exercise your right to delete, delete, delete.

If you don’t want potential creepers to see the bizarre things you did when you were 12, it’s time to Drop Everything Else and Delete.  You don’t have time to worry about homework or projects, it’s time to go on a nostalgic trip into the past.  And promptly destroy all evidence you ever even had a past.  I know that most people want to post a status (or five) about how unfair it is that a website not run by them can change its design, but complaints haven’t stopped Zuckerburg before–just ask the Winklevoss twins– and they certainly won’t stop him now.

So stop with the whining and get to editing your life story.