A millennial who never joined Facebook

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JimG said:
“Five years from now the only people on the site will probably be two 75-year-old grandmothers in Oklahoma and Lincoln Chafee.

Maybe that’s when I’ll decide to join.”
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What a great article. Thanks for posting it.
 
I never joined Facebook as well. I found its design awful and its purpose ridiculous. Do you know how many employers think there is something wrong with me when they can’t find me and scope me out on Facebook? All of them. You’re a nonperson without a FB account. Good.
 
I never joined either. Its so ad provacative, seeing ads on it everywhere make me dislike it more, its like they didnt already have enough popularity to have ads everywhere. I also care about my privacy.
 
Facebook is way too flippin’ complicated, I have no idea how parents use it. Buttons and ads everywhere. Yeesh, they need to get an Instagram or something…

cough follow me cough (@dallas_r._) cough sneeze
 
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I never had one till an girlfriend I had in high school made one for me. Eventually I started using it. I pretty much only use it for news and those groups I am interested in. Last lent I gave it up and was amazed how much time I was spending on it.
 
To be honest I kind of miss how it used to be when it was just a nice way to keep in touch with people, share photos and arrange meet ups. Now it’s just full of adverts and people pasting “meaningful” messages.
 
I joined it ages ago when it was new. Then couldn’t get rid of it because they won’t let you completely delete your account, only to “lock it”. I haven’t been there since over 5 years ago. Don’t like the lack of privacy on it.
 
I joined facebook back when it was limited to select colleges and more of a linkedin.
WAY, before it was open to the public and most people, had heard of it. From my understanding, my account is among the oldest. I’m on now because my parents and husband’s parents and our grandparents are on and it’s about all the technology they can master. I have less than 50 friends…and most of those are the above folk (parents, inlaws, grandparents) plus my cousins and brothers–as we all use the platform to talk to our parents and grandparents.

A number of my friends do not have it. Not having facebook isn’t some badge of hipster courage—although many seem to think it is.
 
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Everyone I know has an account, and I still don’t get the purpose. “It’s how I stay in touch with friends.” “We can share photos.”

Well, I stay in touch with true friends by talking to them. In person. On the phone. Email. Maybe my definition of a friend is different than most.

Oh yeah, that’s so old school, I know. I am such a dinosaur. But I really don’t see the need to put my life out there for my real friends ( they would already know what’s going on) or acquaintances. ( who don’t really need to know.) I don’t understand why people put some of their details out there for all to see.

BragBook. SpyBook. GossipBook. AffirmationBook.
 
Facebook is somewhat safer for my older relatives than email. My relatives know not to friend anyone and we set it up so they cannot get messages from non-friends, nor can they get friend requests. Email–its so full of scams these days–cannot really be trusted. My grandmother, as well as my husbands, can no longer efficiently use a phone. We live far away (his parents moved away from their parents, my grandparents are snowbirds) so in-person contacts are out.
 
I never had a real personal account. I did create a fake account because I needed to do some work on Facebook once. I had two actual friends on this account. I have revealed no personal information (it uses a fake name) other than an email address that I don’t share with anyone or use with anyone.

What is amazing is that when I rarely sign in despite having shared almost no personal information it suggests as friends people I do know but who aren’t friends with the two people I am friends with. For instance it suggested a childhood friend who lives in another state. Most bizarrely it suggests my car mechanic.

What I am saying is this spy device is so good that it actually doesn’t even need for you to (name removed by moderator)ut relevant information in order to graph your life. It can know you just by small bits of data that you either drip out or by stealing your data from your devices. I always knew it was to be avoided but seeing this with a fake account makes me realize just how dangerous Facebook is.
 
Eh it’s a tool like anything else.
Can be used for good or evil.

It is extremely helpful for anything requiring a mass response, like planning a large event, responding to someone who had a disaster or death in the family, a prayer group, etc. Getting 50 RSVPs or condolences in your regular e-mail box is a nightmare trying to sort them out from the bills, the spam, etc. I avoid friending anyone I do not know personally at this point, although many of my friends I did meet on the Internet pre-Facebook and the friendships have endured through three or four changes of the “trendy” tech platform (listservs, BB forums, Livejournal, Myspace, Facebook etc.)

Sometimes I also do see things in the “suggested ads” that I want to buy.
Sometimes they post some real howlers like constantly showing me “Christian match” ads in the past when my profile said “Married” and more recently, showing me an ad for a book called “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” right after I posted about a death in the family.

If one is nervous about being “spied” on by businesses or the government, then go live off the grid. I don’t put anything on Facebook that I care if anyone else knows, sees, or puts under the glass on the desk of the FBI director. As the guy from Sun Microsystems said, “There is no privacy on the Internet. Get over it.”

My husband chose not to have one because he had government clearances that would have required him to report things like contact with foreign nationals (we have a number of friends in Europe, Canada etc.) Which was fine, it’s a personal choice, but he did make very heavy use of a locked BB forum that most of our friends were on.
 
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Irishmom2 said:
Everyone I know has an account, and I still don’t get the purpose. “It’s how I stay in touch with friends.” “We can share photos.”

Well, I stay in touch with true friends by talking to them. In person. On the phone. Email. Maybe my definition of a friend is different than most.

Oh yeah, that’s so old school, I know. I am such a dinosaur. But I really don’t see the need to put my life out there for my real friends ( they would already know what’s going on) or acquaintances. ( who don’t really need to know.) I don’t understand why people put some of their details out there for all to see.

BragBook. SpyBook. GossipBook. AffirmationBook.
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I think it’s less about keeping in touch with ‘friends’ than sharing information very quickly and efficiently with a circle of acquaintances. Whether that information is really necessary or important is a matter of debate, but it does speed up the process. It’s also quite the soapbox (my least favorite aspect of it and the one that makes me most want to stop using it, as my liberal ‘friends’ are constantly shoving their very one-sided political opinions down my throat).

I was pretty much inactive on it for about 5 years until last summer I joined a private group started by the family of a little boy who had cancer (he’s since passed away); I joined so that I could see how he was progressing in his treatments. Then I found myself using it to see what the other parents at my son’s school were up to, and finally I started posting pictures of my art work on it (that’s about all I post), so I’m back using it every day. Eeek.
 
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