What's your opinion of facebook

[shainski]

When I interact with people, I like to tailor what I say and how I say it based on the audience.

When I go to a party, I usually end up talking to a few people at a time.

I don’t usually communicate to everyone at the same time the same way. So, Facebook is a bit unnatural for me. I feel like I am going to a party and shouting what I have to say to everyone at the same time.

Even if I would have said basically the same thing to everyone at that party, I would have said it differently, and I would have seen their reactions and altered my conversation.

So, I don’t hate Facebook, but I don’t love it either. I find that I end up thinking a lot less about some people than I used to because of it, and that bothers me.

With some people, I feel like I am reading their private diary.

It is a good way of keeping in touch with people that live in areas all over. Staying in their lives. I just don’t consider it too personal.

 

[Jersey_Jeepster]

I had a Facebook account for about 3-years, or so. I deactivated my account, and requested complete deletion, almost a year ago now. Here’s why:

Overall, I think the negatives outweigh the positives with Facebook.

On the positive side, Facebook is a very good tool to keep in-touch with family and loved ones. If you own a business, Facebook can be a vital element to advertise and service customers. You can use your news feed as a hub for news and personal interests, which is how I used Facebook. Your voice and opinion can be heard by many on any subject or issue or consumer concern.

Now for the negative side. First of all, no one on the planet has that many friends. I saw friends lists that totaled in the hundreds to thousands for some people. This is fantasy. I only “friended” people who are actually my friends, and not everyone who requested friendship. I believe we should be left to wonder about some of the people who enter our lives. I do not need to know every real-time aspect of the lives of every person I ever met. I don’t even need to know what they are up to in general. That is what high school reunions are for, if you want to attend them.

I noticed people using Facebook to prop up what they obviously viewed as a mundane life, by showing pictures of vacations and bragging about raises or promotions and making their life seem like a fairytale come true. It was obvious to me that most people use Facebook for exaggeration and validation of an otherwise common and ordinary existence.

I tweaked my privacy settings to block the status updates of all of my friends and “likes.” I just did not care to know what they ate for breakfast, or how wonderfully (supposedly) their life is going, or how they became the successful super hero they are today. I simply did not buy all the personal propaganda I was shown.

Other than the need to fight off the depression I could have experienced by believing every person I have ever known is leading a fairytale life, I had to constantly reject Facebook’s demands to take a deep look into all of my private information. If I wanted to do something as simple and harmless as play a game or use an app, I not only had to allow access to all my personal, private and sensitive information by Facebook, I had to allow that same intrusion into my information to the maker of the app; and I had to allow that same access by the same people to all my friends’ accounts. Just to use an app, I had to sell-out all my friends and “likes.” This is absurd.

I also got really tired of seeing the advertisements in the right-hand margin that told me which Facebook pages, web sites, or products my “friends” were using or “liking.” Quite honestly, I simply got tired of seeing all these people from my past.

Again, I truly think we should be left to wonder about the people in our past and not have to stave off an inferiority complex brought on by the exaggerations and facades posted on Facebook by people trying to stave off their own inferiority complex.

 

[InNomineDomini]

I really like it. I follow a lot of Catholic pages so I have a chance to learn some new things about my Faith just by looking at my news feed most days.

This is how I use Facebook, too.

I enjoy being able to connect to authors and bloggers and professors and many others via Facebook. If a person chooses to set things up properly, their news feed can be quite rewarding spiritually and intellectually.

Plus, if you appreciate folks like Jimmy Akin or Karl Keating, it’s just fun being able to interact with them.