Facebook has reduced a birthday wish to a meaningless and robotic action.

You type: “happy birthday!”

The person replies with: “Thanks!” -- and that’s the end of all conversation -- until the next year on the same date.

Receiving a plethora of birthday wishes throughout the day certainly makes me feel special, I’m not going to deny that. I secretly used to look forward to all the messages when I was in high school. Whenever Facebook told me about someone else’s birthday, I was quick to write on their wall even if I barely knew them because I believed in the power of little things. A smile can have a big impact on a stranger’s life, as can one simple birthday wish. We should take any chance we get to make a person happy and make the world a less hostile place.

But, now that I’m older I’ve realized that those wishes don’t have as much of an impact on me as they used to. Moreover, I don’t write on everyone’s wall anymore - especially if I barely talk to them. What’s the point? Does an acquaintance’s generic birthday wish on your wall really have the power to make your day better? Thank you for acknowledging my existence and trying to make my birthday special, but, let’s be honest - we don’t truly care about each other.

Just as we don’t say the three words “I love you” unless we mean it, let’s not say happy birthday unless we mean it. If we truly meant it, it wouldn’t just be a generic wall-post, it would be much more: A phone call, a hug, a dinner date, a present, or any action that reflects how thankful you are that the person has been brought into this world on this fateful date.

Only the people you truly care about have the power to make you happy--your family, your close friends, old friends, childhood friends, or your colleagues, etc. These are the people who hold a special place in your heart. These are the people who are there for you when you need them. These are the people whose efforts you should appreciate.

A stranger’s wish can give you a momentary feeling of happiness, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Don’t make the mistake of placing value on the multitude of wall-posts you receive on your birthday. When I was in high school, my birthday fell on a busy weekday but my father made all of us go out to dinner together. As we sat in a restaurant to celebrate my birthday, I was too preoccupied with my phone because I was responding to everyone’s birthday wishes. As I look back on that memory, I realize how pathetic and skewed my values were. I was giving importance to people I barely talk to on Facebook rather than my family who went out of their way to make time for me on my birthday. Years later, I don’t remember those individual wall posts, I remember my family’s efforts - the efforts that I took for granted. I wish I could go back to that day and be present in the moment - a moment with my father, mother, and sister all in one place...a moment that I miss so much.

So, let us turn off our phones and spend time with our loved ones on our birthday. You are not defined by the number of happy birthday posts on your wall, you are defined by the depth of your relationships.