Happy Birthday Colin

Submission 34,402

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About

Happy Birthday Colin is a Facebook page created by a mother living in Michigan to cheer up her ten-year-old son Colin after he told her that he did not want a birthday party because he has no friends to invite. Within days, the page was quickly filled with thousands of well wishes.

Background

Colin, a 10-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome living in Richland, Michigan, will turn eleven on March 9th, 2014. When his mother Jennifer offered to throw him a birthday party, he told her it would be "pointless since he has no friends."^[2] Then on February 2nd, Jennifer created a Facebook page^[1]titled “Happy Birthday Colin" for her friends to leave birthday wishes for Colin, expecting a few dozens of likes or responses at the most, if any.

Post by Happy Birthday Colin.

Yet, to Jennifer's much surprise, the page gained over 8,000 likes within the first the week, and as of February 13th, the page has more than 1.7 million likes. Jennifer has further explained on the Facebook page that she wants to keep the birthday wishes a secret from her son until his actual birthday.

Notable Developments

Media Coverage

On February 9th, Colin and Jennifer's story was covered by their local news channel Wood-TV8 (shown below).^[3]
On February 10th, UK Newspaper The Daily Mail^[4] covered the story, and on February 12th, Mashable^[5] and Fox News^[6] published pieces on the Facebook page.

Multi-Media Response

On February 11th, Jennifer posted a picture on the Facebook page of the first birthday cards Colin received through a P.O. Box she listed on the Facebook page.

Several groups have create videos to wish Colin a happy birthday, leaving them on the Facebook page. The videos include a message from Texas' Rosenberg Police Department, and Indiana University's Alpha Xi Delta sorority, both uploaded on February 12th.