Any reason I should be on Facebook?

Factual Questions
1

This may belong in IMHO, but I do sort of want a factual answer if possible.

Question first: Is there any benefit, or conceivable reason why I should be on Facebook?

Background: I am a unreconstructed, cranky old (84) geezer, but I have used computers since 1981 and am reasonably savvy about everything dealing with them.

I enjoyed newsgroups discussions on various subjects for years, I got on the Internet long before GUIs and Windows (and I still would prefer DOS, but too late now).

Personally, I am not antisocial, more asocial. I have a few friends still alive and enjoy meeting with them, but I abhor mobs (any group of more than six). My wife is somewhat the same, but not to the same degree. I am, and always have been a loner. I can enjoy running, climbing mountains or hiking with other people, but I am just as happy doing it all by myself.

As long as there is the Internet, books, magazines, newspapers, Netflix and the SDMB, I can find all the information and amusment I will ever want. As to my kids, I do enjoy emailing them, and even picking up the telephone and actually talking into it (no texting for me).

I suppose the Dope could be considered “social media,” (even there I only peruse GQ, IMHO and MPSIMS), but other kinds such as Facebook or Twitter strike me as absurd. I tried to go to Facebook once to see what is what, but they require registration just to get in, and I’ll be damned if I will do that, even with a phony name.

I certainly am not on a quest for more “friends” nor want anything about me broadcast all over the world.

So am I really missing anything of value?

2

Meh, what’s the harm?

Someone of your age has probably lost touch with a number of friends from your past, even if you are a self-described loner, and morbid curiosity might get the better of you as it did for me when I joined.

It was nice to find old friends and acquaintances from years ago and it’s interesting to see snippets of their life.

3

Not that I can see, no. I’m on it, and I still don’t always know why. Today I posted:

If you don’t occasionally want to say things like that to people not within earshot, I wouldn’t bother.

4

Look, Facebook is like a fancy kitchen appliance.

If you hear your friends talking about their cool new panini maker and you see an ad for it, and you think, “Huh. I should probably make more panini,” and then you go buy one for yourself, it’s going to sit in your closet until you sell it at a yard sale four years later.

However, if you’re constantly thinking, “MAN. I wish I could make panini right now but I don’t have a panini maker! DAMMIT.” Then you probably will use your panini maker, and you should get one.

Facebook, same thing. If you’re vaguely wondering if you’re missing out but are pretty sure you’re fine without it: You’re fine without it. If you’re thinking, “Hey, a lot of my friends are connecting on there and I’d like to get in on that and connect with them in that way,” then you should join. You sound pretty definitely in the former camp to me.

5

I don’t get the sense you’d get anything out of it, but it’s a good tool to keep in contact with a lot of people. If you have a large social network that uses Facebook, it can be a helpful tool. If you don’t, you’re not missing out on anything. Personally, I love Facebook. It’s brought me thousands of dollars of business and it’s made last-minute social planning a snap. I understand why others don’t like it, but it works for me.

6

I would recommend Facebook only if you have extended family members who use it but are not geographically close to you.

I grudgingly use Facebook only to keep in touch with family in other states. I don’t play games, take quizzes or “like” endless amounts of garbage. Unfortunately, lots of other people do so I must wade through a colossal amount of worthless junk to get any real news. It’s got a lot of bad with the good, frankly I liked MySpace better.

It is nice to see updated pictures of my nieces and nephews, and a friend of mine who lives in Georgia got married last year; I’ve only seen pictures of his wife through FB. This is the only reason I am on FB.

I’m also learning that my friends in real life, who I enjoy spending time with, seem much more boring on FB. Believe me, I don’t care that you had spaghetti tacos for dinner. I didn’t need to know that you think spandex is flattering. I do not want to hear about little Billy getting sick last night and throwing up Hamburger Helper all over the xbox, and I REALLY REALLY don’t want to to see another mindless status update that you forwarded from your pastor asking the masses for prayers for some diabetes victim sitting in some hut in Burkina Faso. Or whatever.

That stuff gets very old very quick. Be prepared for it.

FB has rather ambiguous ideas regarding privacy, which is something I’m just now learning.

Of course, I’m just new learning that the SDMB has teeth and isn’t afraid to take a bite… :wink:

7

Thanks, guys. This is why I love the Dope: intelligent and funny people who give interesting advice.

MsWhatsit, I could not hope for a better and more amusing reply.

As to keeping in touch with family and friends, what the heck is wrong with email?

8

E-mail is targeted. I mean, maybe you send mass e-mails to friends and family, but those are pretty unusual. With Facebook, you say, “off to San Juan!” or whatever, and everyone knows.

Similarly, if somebody else says they’re off to San Juan, you know, whereas they might not have e-mailed you to say so.

Facebook is useless for keeping in touch with people you’re close to. It’s very, very helpful for keeping in touch with people you like enough to talk to but don’t like enough to actually make an effort.

9

I don’t use email for friends and family anymore. Facebook is better, and makes email more or less obsolete. It’s really just keeping up, but not like texting. Everybody is on FB, even everyone’s grandparents, so it’s not just a passing trend or only for kids or something.

I’ve bumped into some interesting people from all over the world I wouldn’t have any other way, but it’s not like I have to actually talk to them every time I see them.

10

I’ll contend that FB is only as good as the people you are friends with on FB. I’m pretty tight about who I friend. I don’t friend anyone I feel I’d need to censor myself for. I don’t friend anyone with wildly disparate political views. I don’t friend anyone I wouldn’t like to hear from. I’m quick to de-friend anyone who makes me angry or upset with their posts. I never add any apps except one game I play with my brother. I don’t “join” or “like” much stuff. I hide things all the time and never have to hear about them again. I never ever sign on to chat.

I feel like I am doing it “right” for me and I get a ton of enjoyment from it. I’ve made new friends (from old friends, friends-of-friends, etc). I’ve read a lot of good articles and clicked on a lot of funny videos. I’ve shared a ton of photos and enjoyed my friends’ photos. I’ve had some great conversations. I’ve gone to events. It’s been great.

If you don’t go into it thinking you HAVE to do anything. If you don’t want to friend someone who asks, don’t. If you don’t want to join a cause someone asks you to join, don’t. If you don’t want to hear anymore about Farmville, hide it. If you don’t like what someone posts, hide or de-friend them. If you don’t want people to see your pictures, don’t.

Also, don’t go into it with a bad attitude. You don’t need Facebook but you also don’t know what you’re missing until you try it.

11

I have to constantly remind myself that my mother-in-law is reading my posts. :smack:

12

Here’s an examples of why I like Facebook:

There’s a guy I went to high school with who runs a mission school in Central America. We weren’t close friends back then, so I never would have thought about tracking him down on email. And I doubt he would have bothered to send me updates on his life. But I love reading the dispatches he posts on Facebook. It’s a connection that wouldn’t exist otherwise.

13

I’ll just gently point out that if you’re playing “Paradise Island” on your iP[whatever] or Android device you can’t achieve 100% of the available awards unless you post images of your island to your Facebook account.

I don’t have a Facebook account, so I’m doomed.

14

Try it for a while. If you sort of like it, then log in maybe one a month. If you don’t like it, then let it go.

15

I am not very social at all and I was skeptical of joining but I am convinced now. It is free so you have little to lose. People will find you to share stories and photos and things that you may have never known about or forgotten about. I live a very long way from where I grew up and I lost touch with basically the first half of my life almost completely. Facebook alone restored that very quickly. You just start adding people as friends and your network will branch out like a spider web. You can use it for whatever you want. It can be like a 24/7 high school reunion or you can just use it as an easy place to upload pictures to share with whoever you want.

For a tip, you can turn off most of the dumb stuff sent automatically by other people’s games and things like that very easily. If you don’t do that, it looks like a pointless stream of nonsense much of it typed on purpose by people you know. I just use it to send private messages to people that I had long lost touch with.

16

Know that you will likely see a bunch of useless annoying game posts on FB. You can hide them all pretty easily, so don’t let that bother you.

17

The best use of Facebook is a way of staying in touch with people outside of your very close group of friends, and for that purpose it’s absolutely brilliant. It lets you keep up to date with, and keep in touch with, old friends or old work colleagues who you genuinely like but who you’re not really close enough with to pick up a phone and call them regularly for no reason, or email them regularly out of the blue, just to find out what they’re up to. Facebook lets you see what they’re up to - recent photos they’ve added, where they’re working, snippets of information they’ve put up on their page - and then it gives you an easy of getting in touch and sending them a short message. Having information and pictures of them up on the page, and having a way to contact them without needing any personal contact details that can change, makes it immeasurably easier to get in touch with them, and it means you wind up contacting and staying in touch with people you otherwise might not have done.

It’s also a great way of allowing a wide circle of friends - a whole school year, for instance, or a whole, extended family - to keep up to date with each other’s photos, organise events, and keep up with everyone’s general social activity.

If you only have a small group of close friends and family who you’re in touch with via email/phone anyway, and you’re not looking to find old friends again, you’re probably not missing out on much. The only thing I can think of for someone in that situation is that Facebook is one of the only ways you can easily share dozens or even hundreds of photos with a group of people all at once. It’s not easy to do that with email, and it might feel a bit presumptuous sending your friends photos of, say, your hiking trip anyway. Putting them on Facebook means any of them can just have a look through if they want to.

18

Selfish but good motivations for being on Facebook:

Viewing candid pictures of people you are attracted to. Sometimes you find some interesting stuff. (I didn’t know that gal from the coffee shop had a black vinyl dress and thigh-high boots!)

Seeing that the losers from high school indeed turned out to be losers. On the other hand, there are some people out there who are great at managing their online image so they appear very successful. Then again, you can do this too and make all your friends jealous.

Similar to the above, looking up old classmates to see who got fat, who got knocked up, who went on to become somewhat remarkable and who went on to be a garbage collector.

Being able to interact with people without having to actually talk to them.

Being able to find and block people you don’t want to interact with. Jerks from high school? Exes you never want to look at again? You can literally make them not exist anymore. You can’t see them and they can’t see you. There’s a great t-shirt that says “How do I block you in real life?” which I think sums up the plus side of this nicely.

Easily learn if someone is compatible with your interests. Let’s say you make friends with someone you might want to be closer to in real life. You look at what they have posted under interests. You find drugs, alcohol, the Insane Clown Posse, joyriding, shotgun jousting, sleeping all day, etc. And you think “no thanks!” Or perhaps you think “What up ninja!” Either way, you are better informed than whatever their outward appearance tells you. Facebook doesn’t just make it easier to judge people, it makes it easier to judge them accurately.

19

I was a long-time facebook hater, but have recently started falling in sorta-love with it.

It’s a magic tool for maintaining a “social periphery.” For close friends and family, email and IM have always been fine, but facebook is great for less-close friends. It’s also useful as a headsup for some upcoming events and whatnots.

Mileage will vary directly in proportion to how much you care about your secondary social circle – for years, I hated facebook because I DIDN’T care. I had some close friends and that was good enough. Nowadays, I see a lot more importance in staying in touch with secondary friends (especially since many old primary friends have moved into secondary). As such, I see a lot more use for facebook.

20

My 85 year old mother uses Facebook daily - primarily to see pictures of her great-granddaughter that are posted daily by my daughter.

There is a daily picture via email, but the quick snaps and short videos during the day all end up on Facebook.

Mom and Dad (92) also love the daily video chats with said great-granddaughter, who at 2 and a half is a lousy conversationalist, but fun to watch.