I turned thirty <s style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">last</s> on(1) January 22nd. Because it was <s style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">on</s> a(2) Wednesday, I didn't throw a party. I had a small family reunion instead. One thing that surprised me this year, though, was that none of my friends remembered my birthday. I didn't receive any calls or text messages from them, and I'm sure that it happened because I deleted my Facebook account. That makes me think about how dependent on social media we <s style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">could </s>can(3) be these days.
1 If you’re referring to January 22, 2019, I would just say, “I turned thirty on January 22nd, 2019” or “I turned thirty last year.” But the second one would require changing later sentences. It seems like you were talking about this year, which is what my correction would refer to.
2 The word “it” here refers to “January 22nd” in the previous sentence, which wasn’t on a day, it<em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); background-color: transparent;"> was</em> a day.
3 Use ”could” for a particular possibility that hasn’t necessarily happened. For example, “If we did y, x <em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); background-color: transparent;">could</em> happen.”
“X <em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); background-color: transparent;">could be</em> because of y.” versus “X <em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); background-color: transparent;">can be</em> because of y.” The first refers to a specific scenario, which the speaker doesn’t know or isn’t giving the reason behind. The second is talking about a type of scenario, some instances of which occur because of y.
I used to be like that, and I used to <s style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">relly</s> rely on the power of Facebook to recall important events that were about to happen. I'm not saying that <s style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">it </s>this(4) is a bad thing, but I believe that we should not take social media reminders for granted since not everybody <s style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">is using it </s>uses them(5).
4 Not technically incorrect, but “this” sounds more natural than “it”.
5 This refers to “social media reminders”, so it would be plural. You could also say, more generally, “since not everybody uses social media.”
