“When he answered the phone, he said:
I'm your dad
.
I did not believe it anymore.
I became a child again.
» After years of wandering, Fabrice (first name has been changed) found his biological father thanks to Facebook.
Born under
It will take five years for the 237,000 members of this community of genealogy enthusiasts to find their parent.
“I knew my mother was dead, the hospital told me.
I posted this message like a bottle in the sea. I like to say that it ended up like a stone in the pond: no one expected it!
".
A year after learning the identity of his father, Fabrice still can't believe it.
“I don’t know how they did it.
They told me that they had gone through the high school archives, that they had contacted former doctors at the hospital... It's so improbable.
I received messages every day, everyone was invested.
» The Breton restaurateur still struggles to believe it.
“It was my father's wife who was contacted by a member, she worked in the same company as him thirty years ago.
»
Also read “By searching for my biological father, I became a fighter”: inside Audrey’s family secret
Wednesday evening, Sabrina also threw “a bottle into the sea”: “My name is Sabrina C., I was born on September 1, 1985 in Valenciennes.
I'm looking for my big brother and my big sister.
» The post quickly reached 500 shares, comments poured in, questions arose: “In which hospital were you born?
», “Do you have a birth certificate?
», “Have you recovered your file?”
".
The connection machine starts up and the social network takes on its full meaning: “I share in Douai”, “I send you advice by private message”, “A doctor is called Jean-François C., that tells you something ?
»
In the middle of the night, she receives a message that she reads when she wakes up: “I am your sister”.
The latter immediately sends him a photo of her birth record, in which the names of his biological parents are written.
“Everything matched,” laughs this resident of Metz.
At 38, she found the sister she never saw, entrusted to a foster family when she was three days old.
“She knew she had a sister, it was a friend of hers who shared the post.
She made the connection directly.
We called each other for three hours the next day, it was so natural to talk to him,” Sabrina tells us.
Directory of modern times
When they launched “The Facebook”, or “Le Trombinoscope”, in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and his acolytes designed a directory reserved for Harvard students, far from imagining that 20 years later, the site would serve as a global directory.
The platform has gradually permeated uses and is replacing old research methods.
In the 1980s, Evelyse started with the yellow pages, department by department, in search of her sister's name.
Years later, she went to the Post Office and did her research on Minitel.
Four years ago, she finally Googled her name.
The first link redirects her to her eldest's Facebook profile.
“I knew she had the same first name as me.”
She understands that her sister, aged 70, lives just like her in the Var.
Also read: Family secrets: Marie learned the secret of her origins at the age of 30
“It’s complicated to enter a family.
My father had other children, I have half-sisters, half-brothers, nephews… My sister was not aware that I existed.
Now she tells me that I'm her ray of sunshine, that she's super happy to have met me.
It was thanks to Facebook that this could happen.
»
The only downside is that in these groups, which are often public, the names and histories of families are revealed to allow members to deepen their research.
Very personal information that can expose users to identity theft.