This is a bit disingenuous to say these kind of reflection were not possible before. What happened in the old days was that your social life was much more local

This is a bit disingenuous to say these kind of reflection were not possible before. What happened in the old days was that your social life was much more localized : your street, your neighborhood, your village, your parish, etc. So rather that looking at pictures, you would be on your porch and you would be looking at your friend's kids playing in the street , wondering how all these years had gone so fast. Social platform allow to extend your social network beyond some (arbitrary) geographical limitations, but it does not really add anything to the human experience that was not there before, so to speak. I know that I am stating the obvious, but I think "some of these things did not exit before" was a bit too strong.