
Facebook Isn't Worth It - rasca123
http://seersuckermag.com/opinion/read/facebook-isnt-giving-back-what-we-put-in
======
graue
The problem with posts like this, both pro- and anti-Facebook, is that they
are just someone's experience and our experiences vary. If your personal use
of Facebook had similar results to the author's, you nod your head, perhaps
virtually applaud, and share the link. I know I'm tempted to do so here.

But I also know that there are people who use Facebook in a way that
strengthens, augments and reinforces real-life relationships. I've also read
of studies that show a positive, not a negative, correlation between time
spent on social media and how engaged people are with others in person. Some
will say, "well, duh" to that, and will shake their heads at an article like
this, which to them only shows that someone doesn't know how to use Facebook.

Both experiences are valid. I follow a sociologist on Twitter who writes a lot
of essays from the latter viewpoint. To him, it's a theoretical split. There
is the "digital dualist" theory, that basically says online/offline is a zero
sum game and social media makes friendships shallow and disposable, and there
is the "augmented reality" theory that all is connected, that what we do
online _is_ real life and not something different. And he holds the latter
theory to be correct while the former, he finds simplistic, sentimental and
broken. (I'm thinking of @nathanjurgenson if anyone wants to follow along,
have done my best to represent his views but obviously this summary is my own)

I disagree with all of the above. It has become ever more clear to me that
some people really do use and experience Facebook in a dualistic way while
others do not. There is no one, unified, grand theory of Facebook that
encompasses all experiences. Both camps would like to say, "This is how it is,
period", but they are really saying, "This is how it is _for me_ ".

~~~
paganel
> But I also know that there are people who use Facebook in a way that
> strengthens, augments and reinforces real-life relationships.

My mother, who lives in the countryside, no Internet, late 50s, first saw her
2-year old niece when I showed her the photos my cousin had posted on
Facebook. She was amazed and happy at the same time.

So yes, while for some Facebook may look like this juggernaut that tries to
destroy everything on its path, for others is just a way to experience some
emotions that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

~~~
papsosouid
Sharing photos was very much possible before facebook, and is still possible
without facebook. Quite contrary to your claim that facebook is making this
possible that wouldn't be otherwise, they are actually limiting what most
people think is possible, having convinced the world at large that they are
the internet. Facebook is destined to continue following the same path as AOL.

------
tomasien
I can't even debate this blog, because if he doesn't get utility from
Facebook, socially, then he doesn't get utility form it. That's factual.

But I, and most of my close friends, get HUGE social utility from the
platform. Some just use it for Events, some for micro-blogging, some for
passively keeping in touch, some for messaging, etc. etc. But I know lots of
people much better because of Facebook.

And that is also factual.

~~~
krenoten
Facebook yields a lot of value for a lot of people. Most of the people I am
friends with use it extensively, and post things that will make it harder for
them to get a public sector job that requires any kind of background check.
They are pretty much all banned from politics for the content that they have
shared. Not a lot of college students in the US are choosing majors that will
help them get jobs, and it makes me sad that they are hurting their chances
even more. They have heard from me and other people that it is important to
communicate so openly only with those they trust, but I have only managed to
teach a few of them how to use cryptography effectively. It is a very hard
sell.

Facebook is worth it for a lot of people. But it's easy to run too far against
the diminishing returns that additional time on it yields, and it's easy to
slam doors in your future that may otherwise have been valuable.

~~~
kellishaver
My own experiences with Facebook have been pretty disappointing. I ended up
reconnecting with old friends I'd lost touch with over the years, only to find
out that with the exception of exactly one of them, they all had political,
religious, and social views vastly different than my own.

A large number of them also apparently spend what I would consider a very
unhealthy amount of time on Facebook posting angry, racist messages that just
seem to continually make them angrier and more racist as they feed off of one
another. I've lost a lot of respect for a lot of people because of the things
they put on Facebook. It's like, they log on to the site and all filters go
off.

I've found that with the exception of 2 or 3 people who only seem to
communicate with the outside world via their Facebook account, everyone that I
follow whom I genuinely want to keep up with are ones I was already talking to
through other channels.

Myself and most of my friends use Skype quite extensively for keeping in
touch. Others email and use Google Talk.

~~~
jff
> My own experiences with Facebook have been pretty disappointing. I ended up
> reconnecting with old friends I'd lost touch with over the years, only to
> find out that with the exception of exactly one of them, they all had
> political, religious, and social views vastly different than my own.

"I used to like that guy, until I found out he _thinks things_ what are
different from things _I_ think"

(racists are still terrible OK)

~~~
kellishaver
Oh, sorry. I can see how that was misinterpreted.

I don't mind that they have different opinions/views, I just meant that after
reconnecting came the realization that we have virtually nothing in common
anymore, so I didn't really derive any benefit out of it in the sense that it
didn't really rekindle any old friendships.

Nothing wrong with that at all and I can respect that, our lives just went in
different directions.

The only ones where I was really bothered/lost respect where the ones
constantly posting the racist/hateful stuff, which certainly wasn't all of
them, but a large enough portion that a combination of these two factors has
just made the whole experience useless at best.

------
veb
This article sounds silly. Most of us have grown up with our parents talking
to their friends in "real life". I don't know about some of you, but I
definitely talk to my friends face-to-face, whenever I can...

To me, the Internet and social media, are simply a change. Just like the
telephone was a "change". Before then, you'd talk to people face-to-face, (or
using smoke signals) so I'd imagine if we looked through some newspapers when
telephones first came in, we'd probably see this exact same post.

~~~
rgbrgb
I bet it was fairly rare for an adult to spend 8 hours a day on the telephone
when it first came out.

~~~
corporalagumbo
The internet in the 2000s is a much, much richer medium than telephone calls
in the 1900s. Look at us - integrating throughout or taking time from our day
to discuss and debate the news here, online.

------
msoad
In my current life, communication that I have with my friends via Facebook is
closer, faster and more reliable than anything other than in person
communication.

It happens very often, friend do not answer phone or text but will notice
Facebook message right away.

I can't even compare conversations in comments in a photo of me in hospital
with anything else. My friends (who mostly didn't know each other) learned who
is worried about me and arranged a visit to hospital together right under my
photo in comments.

People tend to abuse Facebook a lot. But if you use it as a tool it's fine.

------
borplk
Almost everything I ever want to say when people look at me in awe and say
"You aren't on Facebook?".

I just don't get any satisfaction from maintaining a list of acquaintances and
classmates that I happen to know because we happened to go the same school and
I have no interest in reading about their lives and stalking them and finding
out who their girlfriend/boyfriends are and who their newest friend is.

I like the traditional way of friendship and communication because it has a
'natural permission setting'. For example if you ask my close friends they can
tell you a lot of stuff about me, but once you get a little further, they wont
know that much.

Facebook creates this artificial thing where you can get a lot of information
about someone without them knowing and you can exchange a very small amount in
return.

In the traditional way, if you care enough about me to want to know if I'm
single or not, you will have to ask me (explicit expression) but using
Facebook you can just look it up (implicit).

~~~
Evbn
You can curate your FB sharing lists to handle this, just like in real life.

------
hexonexxon
Facebook to me is hot garbage, cult of the celebrity trash.

Nobody I know in my circle of IRL friends and family uses it anymore when you
can sign up to twitter under a nym and directly ask guys like Charlie Miller
questions about exploit payload delivery instead of being drowned in an
avalance of spam wall posts, annoying quiz results, farm watering requests,
and endless PMs from ex girlfriends or people from highschool you have no
intention of talking to ever again because you didn't like them then, why
would you want to be their e-friend now.

~~~
nwh
I wonder if there's a market for something in-between. A Facebook-alike
service with no apps, no advertising and nothing but posts containing original
content (no 'share').

~~~
hexonexxon
a decentralized phone app social network would work to cut down on costs
because you'd make no income :P

i prefer to have a private jabber/OTR chatroom open with a bunch of friends in
it to talk to each other back and forth like a slow room IRC channel all day.
privacy ftw so nobody ends up fired when going on a rant about a project,
their company or relationships.

~~~
nwh
> jabber/OTR

That would be ideal, but I doubt the US government would allow a private
communication platform to operate on a large scale. Unless it was hosted
outside of the states, it would be quickly backdoored for their benefit.

I've had ideas like that in the past (think Twitter crossed with GPG), but I
think you'd struggle to get people adopting the platform.

------
BruceIV
Perhaps the newsfeed isn't useful, but Facebook has largely replaced email for
personal communication for me - you know people actually check their Facebook
inbox, as opposed to their 3/6/more email inboxes, and you can easily set up
mailing lists and events. The newsfeed I could probably live without, but the
messaging system is a killer app because of the network effects.

------
WhaleFood
I think facebook definitely has beneficial uses (reconnecting with old
friends, arranging events etc). But I feel like a lot of people are addicted
to it and allow it to get in the way of having real, face-to-face
interactions. Eg people who can't have a dinner conversation without looking
down every 10 seconds to check their wall. It's a kinda scary trend that seems
to be becoming increasingly prevalent in the younger generations.

~~~
taligent
And older people could say exactly the same thing about email, IM and
discussion forums like HN.

I know far more people who check their email religiously than check Facebook.

~~~
acjohnson55
It's funny, but if you read the book The Information by James Gleick, you can
see how people thought the exact same things about the telegraph that we do
about modern communications technologies, both positive and negative.

------
crikli
Facebook is a tool. And like all tools, its value is defined by how you choose
to use it.

Two years ago it was a worthless, annoying site with news feed full of mommies
talking about their kids' snot.

So I engaged with the site to make it my own.

Today, because of relationships sustained and informed by Facebook, I'm doing
Crossfit, visiting old friends in person more frequently, sending packages to
new and old friends who are deployed to Afghanistan, and joining events like
Tough Mudder and GoRuck Challenges.

I think often about the privacy issues, the time suck that it can be, but I
also have to think about positive changes that have come about because of the
way I've used this particular tool. For me FB it's a bigtime net positive.

~~~
generalpf
The article is about the tendencies in communication due to Facebook. A hammer
is just a tool but dammit if it doesn't result in a lot of pounding.

~~~
crikli
"The article is about the tendencies in communication due to Facebook."

Yup, but my point, poorly made perhaps, is that _you_ define your
communication tendencies, and FB is just another communication tool. Not vice
versa as the author intimates.

------
aldous
Well you know, I find I agree with a fair amount in this post. At the core of
FB is there not a paradox - the more 'connected' we become online the less we
engage in more substantive communication offline? For me, I see an abstraction
that takes place; an FB profile check on a friend replaces a phone call, an FB
invite replaces a more direct intimate invitation etc. Are such abstractions
corrosive to relationships in the long run? I'm increasing concluding they
are. Further, does a system that abstracts relationships amplify negative
patterns of behaviour too, such as bullying, stalking, soap boxing and ranting
polemics, obnoxious behaviour/superfluous prattle for sake of attention
seeking etc? Possibly. The toxic paring of FB with the complications of
adolescence seems tangible to me too; my 14 year old step sister has become a
veritable celebrity at school as she uses FB as the medium with which to
qualify quite natural inclinations for her age; peer recognition, kudos, etc.
Robbed of context and played out in front of an goading and somewhat
unsympathetic audience these natural inclinations have warped into something
quite odd and unpleasant. I hope she'll look back and laugh one day but you
know some kids don't pull through it: <http://goo.gl/nzDb1> You can be
mentally rather delicate in these years. As an aside, the distracting
potential of FB seems glaring obvious too; I have witnessed colleagues
productivity plummet when some FB scandal erupts in their digital social
sphere, frustrating when this impacts the rest of the teams work day. As
someone said on here before, I guess use in moderation is the key, but again,
if people don't like the FB service and want to opt out all together, 'more
power to them' I say. This perception of a FB profile as a necessity in the
21st century seems fanciful on one level and insidious on another.

------
brennenHN
The problem is that it's to be removed completely from Facebook. I think about
deleting my profile all the time, but there's potential for awkwardness and
offense that aren't worth it. Facebook has engrained itself in our lives
pretty deeply and it's going to be a huge challenge to dig it back out.

~~~
biomechanica
I had a facebook account once. I thought that by deleting my account it would
somehow limit my social life and, of course, make it a lot harder to keep my
friends and family updated.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Not having a facebook account (or any social media website account) forced me
to be more active. It forced me to contact my friends face to face. This has
HUGE advantages.

This notion that facebook is integrated into our lives tightly is absolutely
an illusion; one that Facebook relys on (or any site like it). Take the
initiative and go out of your way to contact your friends/family "the old
fasioned way".

Rallying groups for a cause isn't as hard as it seems to be, either. You just
have to work a bit more. So what? Our society(ies) is/are becoming so lazy
it's almost unbearable.

Facebook does not dictate your life in any way, shape or form. There are many
people who don't use it and are just fine without it.

~~~
darkarmani
> Not having a facebook account (or any social media website account) forced
> me to be more active. It forced me to contact my friends face to face. This
> has HUGE advantages.

I'm assuming you don't have kids and don't need an easy way to share photos
with family. You know, the parents that ask you to email all of your photos?

I know that piles of baby photos are annoying, but they are less annoying then
when they are forced on you via email. In FB at least you can squelch people
if they annoy you. Or if you really like your friends, you can create a
separate account for baby pics and only post to that account.

~~~
biomechanica
Again with this notion that facebook solves the "sharing photo's" problem. It
is not the only means of communication or file sharing. There are applications
out there that are much better and less susceptible to unwanted eyes/abuse.

While I may not have children, I have close friends who do and family that
does. So what? I communicate with them just fine and share bday photos like
everyone else without a problem and without being tied to facebook.

If you have a problem with annoying photo's without facebook, then may I
suggest telling those involved with sending you too much info/photo's to maybe
limit it a bit? It's not hard to do and you can do it in such a way that
doesn't sound mean. For such a "social network" people have trouble
communicating with each other, it seems.

~~~
darkarmani
> While I may not have children, I have close friends who do and family that
> does. So what? I communicate with them just fine and share bday photos like
> everyone else without a problem and without being tied to facebook.

How does everyone else do this? How do people get both sets of grandparents
checking the same photo sharing site where mom can take pictures at the
playground and share instantly? What photo site is easy enough that the
grandparents can snap photos on their smartphone (that they barely know how to
use) that lets them easily upload them?

> It is not the only means of communication or file sharing.

Of course not. The network effect makes it easy to push the last few missing
family members onto it for a narrow purpose.

> If you have a problem with annoying photo's without facebook, then may I
> suggest telling those involved with sending you too much info/photo's to
> maybe limit it a bit?

I would never tell new parents that. Luckily, some forms of sharing are easy
to rate limit.

> For such a "social network" people have trouble communicating with each
> other, it seems

That's just it. Email isn't really a social network.

------
VeejayRampay
I didn't have time to read the article. I'm just coming here to tell the
author (if he reads this) that the typo and general design of this
website/blog (or whatever it is) is absolutely stunning. One of the best-
looking I've seen. Bravo.

~~~
acjohnson55
I like it overall, but the callout quotes are a bit much for me.

------
mediacrisis
I think its a bit unfair to compare our parents generation (boomers) to ours
(millennials, arguably).

The first thing that comes to mind is that, at least in my social circle, no
one has a land line. We move a lot. We change cell phone numbers (carrier
problems, relationship issues, who knows).

Its arguable that a FB presence is actually more stable than a physical
presence for some social groups. Its not an all encompassing solution for
human interaction by any means, but "worth it" is a very subjective term.

------
k-mcgrady
It seems the author was looking at the Facebook group the wrong way. I'm sure
most people signed up to it to get questions answered and discover who their
roommate was going to be. He seems disappointed that the people he talked to
on it didn't become his friends. The group served it's purpose - to make
friends you converse with people in person when you get to college. The author
seems to have unrealistic expectations of social media.

------
motters
The main thing about about Facebook, or other similar sites, is to ask
yourself how much value you're getting out of it versus how much time you're
spending on it. It you're spending a lot of time but not getting much value
then it may not be worth it.

------
vbrendel
Facebook's mission is "to make the world more open and connected", which to me
does not imply replacing existing forms of communication. The only competitor
to ye olde telephone machine is Skype.

------
slajax
14 pts and 9 comments and OPs site is down.

He probably should have posted it on FB.

------
chris_wot
I think this is a very insightful post.

But what I _really_ want to say is that I _love_ the seersucker web design.
Killer clean, long form posts, great typography... It's awesome!

------
Shorel
Nothing in this post seems specific to Facebook.

I have observed something similar with IRC channels 15 years ago.

Basically he is complaining about human nature in a cyberspace enabled world.

------
rtcoms
Ironically , the article itself accepting comments via facebook.

On the topic , facebook is more of a rss feed for me than social network.

------
dgrant
"Facebook is making us think we know people better"

Umm, who really thinks that?

~~~
chris_wot
Lots and lots and lots of people. Clearly you aren't in that Facebook group.

------
kefs
formatted google cache mirror: <http://goo.gl/MWIJ8>

------
helloamar
we have to abide nature's law in this also "Too Much of Anything Can Be A Bad
Thing" Use it wise

