Facebook’s New Profile Videos Might Actually Bring You Closer to Your IRL Friends

By now, you might’ve heard about the new changes that Facebook is unrolling to profile pictures across the site. Thanks to the popularity of this year’s #CelebratePride filter (hello, 26 million users!), Facebook is making some big changes to the way its users can show off their sense of individuality among the cacophony of the newsfeed.

One word: video.

Among plenty of new features unrolled this week on Facebook, the biggest coup for people who love customizing the heck out of their social media profiles was the addition of profile videos. Like the lovechild of a Vine and a Snapchat story, Facebook video profiles will clock in at seven seconds, loop silently like a personalized GIF, and chime in with sound when users click directly on the video.

So what does this mean for Facebook users? Your filmmaker buddy will be able to flaunt his short-term narrative skills. Your jokester friend will finally be able to show off her hilarity through more than just an ironic picture of laughing with salad. Your activist acquaintance will post a video that’s powerful enough to make you misty in your cubicle.That awesome selfie video you took on vacation will finally have a place cemented at the top of your profile, instead of buried in your Timeline after a couple weeks.

Alas, with great profile power comes great responsibility.

This feature will be the thing that separates the tech savvy from the neophytes on Facebook. Sure, not everyone’s going to go out and shoot a 7-second short film that encompasses his or her personality right away…

But for those of us still lending a helping hand to Facebook beginners, the new video profile feature will represent the latest Everest of technological assistance. For everyone who has helped his or her less-than-tech-savvy parents (or grandparents) set up a Facebook account, sometime in the near future after your mom has seen a loop of you waving from the top of the Eiffel Tower, you know she’s going to want that snazzy stuff on her own profile.

Cue several hours of extremely frustrating patient social media and/or computer coaching. Take it away, Amy Schumer.

But hey, all jokes aside, Facebook really can bring people closer together both on and offline. And what could be a better relationship builder than hanging out with your folks or your friends in real life and taking the director’s chair for a few seconds?