The Good, the Bad, and the Facebook

Seeing some tweets recently about canceling and renewing Facebook accounts, I thought I finally wanted to make a post about it.

I am at the particular age which enables me to have seen Facebook from its much earlier days. I first heard of it my junior year in college from a girl who was "pledging" my sorority with me. Then, it was only for college students--you had to have a .edu email address--and mostly relevant for just your own university. And I thought it's greatest usefulness was being able to select my class schedule and find other students in the class. That function, of course, no longer exists.

In fact, Facebook is completely different. Things started getting strange, I thought, when it became open to other than college students--high schoolers, even middle schoolers. Then their parents. I started getting "friend requests" from all sorts of people and Facebook in general only became less interesting to me, and seldom useful.

So I guess I don't really understand how people find it burdensome and time-wasting, that they feel the need to completely cut it off, since it isn't really a part of my life. See, I only log in about twice a week on average, and almost never for more than 5 minutes.

So when I hear people discussing the evils or the benefits of Facebook, I just wonder why it's so important in the first place. I know some people are able to use it successfully for marketing, for announcements about events in the community, or to keep in touch with friends. But personally I hate having to rely on Facebook to hear about programs. (Whereas I really love subscribing to RSS feeds, which I can easily filter.) In fact, I actually hardly ever hear about activities through Facebook--usually through email or occasionally through Twitter.

Then I wonder--if I feel this way, why is it such a big deal for everyone else? Or is it?