The Quiet Birthday: Why I Took Mine Off the Internet

As a Leo, I’m supposed to love birthdays. We’re stereotypically all about the attention! Give us the crown, the glitter, the theme party, and the spotlight.

So why have I quietly hidden my birthday from the internet?

There’s no one big reason. But there are lots of small ones.

When I was a kid, birthdays weren’t really a thing. For private reasons, my birthday was never a particularly joyful day. And being born in the summer didn’t help. No school meant no cupcakes in the classroom, no chorus of happy birthdays from friends. And school, for me, was the safe place. Home was not.

In my twenties, I made up for lost time…hard. I didn’t really start “living” until I moved out at 17, so by 22, I was throwing a full-blown ‘80s prom-themed party, complete with teased hair, pop music, and a contest for Prom King and Queen. And honestly? I would do the same party again at 44. It was that fun.

But then came social media.

Suddenly, your birthday became a public event. And with it came an avalanche of posts from coworkers, college acquaintances, someone’s mom, and a girl you met in a bar bathroom once. All wishing you well in that copy-paste kind of way.

And because I’m a marketer—and a polite human—I’d respond to every single one. A “thank you!” here, a “like” there. What was once my day turned into a to-do list and constant pings. I felt beholden. Not celebrated.

So I took it all off the grid. Removed the birthday field from Facebook. Stopped posting photos of cake or parties. I didn’t want to be performative about joy, especially on a day that historically brought up complicated feelings.

The people who know, know. A text, a phone call, an old-fashioned card in the mail? I treasure those. They mean the world. But a message from someone who hasn’t spoken to me in 10 years, showing up because Facebook prompted them? I’m okay letting that one go.

I’ve even started planning to be offline on my birthday. Last year, my husband and I were flying home from “Adult Summer Camp” (yes, that’s a real thing and we’ll get into that in another post). I was simply unreachable, reading a book on the plane. And two years before that, we hiked to the Len Foote Hike Inn with our son, where we spent two days in the woods in a cabin with strangers, where wifi is unavailable and technology of any kind is discouraged.

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