The Case Against Facebook

Since I've been receiving pressure from all sides to join up in the latest ephemeral on-line fad, I thought a nice old-fashioned refutation would be in order.

My laundry-list of reasons why I haven't joined the "Cool Kids" club yet:

1) Time waster: Between work, family, books, hobbies, and the plethora of other internet time-sucks I take advantage of (e-mail, blogs, etc.), how can I justify wasting more of my day on Facebook?

2) Popularity Contest: It's basically all the things I hated about high school, right? Having as many "friends" as possible, hoping not to be excluded from somebody's group of "friends", writing on people's walls, doing anything possible to be unproductive with your time . . . yeah, I remember this: Trico High School '95-'98.

3) Lack of Profundity/Impermanence: The thing I love about blogs is that I can post something of substance or something family-related and know that someday my children may be interested to peruse the archives. I doubt any of my progeny will be interested to read my status updates such as, "Oh man, does my toe ever hurt today!"

4) Risk of Offending: I have my high school buddies, my college drinking pals, my Jesus friends, my students, etc . . . it's best if each group knows as little about my other relationships as possible. Would I have to sweat out each update, hoping someone wouldn't take offense about over "I think Miller Lite sucks" or "Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior"? (OK, you wouldn't see the latter . . . maybe the former.)

5) "Culture of Non-relation": One of the priests at Newman coined this phrase about the current generation. An Archbishop recently warned about the "dehumanizing" effects of social networking sites such as Facebook:

“We're losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person's mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point,” he said. “Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanizes what is a very, very important part of community life and living together.” (Link)

A compelling case, I know . . . now, with all that being said: I'm in. I'm going to sign up right now. Sounds like fun.


UPDATE: OK, I started signing up and gave Facebook the following preliminary info: Name, e-mail address, DOB, sex. That's it. The next page came up with a list of about 30 people, all of which I know from various associations. WTH?!? What kind of "1984" set-up is this?!?