You might, but we are talking about broad circle of ordinary people here, most of whom spend considerable time on Facebook and will not leave it unless you give them a very good reason (privacy concerns, ethical reasons won't fly here, trust me) to do that or offer an attractive alternative. Good luck trying to convince some teenage girl to live at least a day without social media.
This is the most non-sensical argument of all of the "I would but I can't" Facebook apologists. I've quit Facebook while many of my friends have not.
I still trade memes, hear about going-ons in the neighborhood, get invited to parties, and generally have a functioning social life. I keep in touch via iMessage, Signal, Facetime, and GASP! SMS, the plain 'ol telephone, and e-mail.
You do not NEED Facebook to have a functioning social life. It simply removes some of the friction of maintaining a social life in exchange for wildly valuable information about yourself and your friends. Meanwhile, it seems to be contributing to the destruction of Western society.
So yea I suppose it seems like a fair trade just so you know about that weekend party milliseconds sooner.
You underestimate how central communication over Facebook has become for some segments of the population. All their friends are on FB. All their family is on FB. Business associates are on FB. Their hobbies and news are on Facebook, and on and on and on.
Sure. They could opt out of that, just as some people opted out of having a telephone in their homes back when it was the primary mode of communication -- but they were so few that one was considered strange for not having one.
Of course, the objections to using Facebook are much stronger than they've ever been for having even a television, nevermind a telephone. Yet most people can't seem to tear themselves away. Not that they'd want to. They've got everything they need on Facebook, don't they?
Um, no. Just no. If anything there is something right with people who don't use Facebook. It is tremendously addictive, and fails to do more than provide the illusion of closeness with family, friends, and acquaintances. One of the smartest things I've ever done was delete my Facebook profile. I've never looked back. When I tell people I'm not on Facebook they're absolutely astonished--as if the world would cease to exist without Facebook. Without Facebook I spend more time focusing on real relationships, and enjoy being surprised by what people have been up to when we catch up--via phone, or in person. On Facebook it would just be data points, news, trivia. Like the time my Dad told me my cousin had moved to Texas. "Oh, really?" I said. "How does she like it there?" To which he responded, "oh, I don't know. I just saw from her Facebook that they moved to Texas." Doh.
I did this. The only thing it gave me was social isolation. People look at you funny when you tell them you don't have a facebook account.
If you have a well-developed circle of friends, sure. But this only holds for what, half of Americans? I don't know people well enough that I'd have a functioning social life without Facebook, unfortunately. I think this holds for many other people as well.
I mean, if you really want it today, there are places in the world you could go to that have little to no internet access.
Where people still communicate mostly in-person.
(I'm only half joking haha).
> Does Facebook really make anyone's life better?
I can only answer for myself. It made my life better:
1. At the start of my career, I got connections, jobs, etc from local groups.
2. I connected with old school mates I wouldn't have found other wise.
3. ...
My assumption is when people are not addicted or living/following fake lives on social media, there is a lot of benefits to it.
But they don't need convincing for us to leave Facebook. My friends who have Facebook also have text, email, phone, and sometimes WhatsApp, Signal, and/or Telegram. AFAIK I haven't ever convinced anyone to leave Facebook, but that hasn't been a barrier to me leaving Facebook at all.
You wouldn't believe the amount of pressure that people put on each other to sign up for Facebook. In some of my circles I'm next to invisible because I'm not 'on facebook'.
That's never going to work on me but I can't fault people for giving in and going with the flow. Still, in many cases it's not as voluntary as it might seem to be to you, just like it almost is no longer voluntary not to have a phone, not to have email and not to have internet access.
Theoretically you should be able to live your life without those, but in practice it is getting harder all the time and a choice against any or all of these comes with a social price that not everybody is willing to pay.
I've been living across an ocean from my family for over 10 years, deactivated my FB account 2 years ago and never turned back. So I really don't understand your "ridiculous to even consider" -- there are many other ways to keep in touch, and doing without the firehose of low-quality information (wall posts, movie recommendations, etc.) pouring through FB gives you more time to focus on the high-quality information that can be better communicated through other media (phone, email, etc.)
I understand that leaving FB (or never using it) is not for everybody, but "ridiculous to even consider" goes way too far. I think actually it would be great for a lot more people to consider it, even if they end up deciding not to actually do it.
yes please! The reason I don't use facebook anymore is because it doesn't present me anything I care about. Just memes, news and updates in some sale groups I am part of. I'm not complaining that it doesn't hog me as much as it used to, but the reason why I still have a account is to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances and see what's going in in their life
I agree with your second point. Not being on Facebook affects none of my life, 'real' or not. And as far as I know, even those in my small friend group who are on Facebook don't really use it much.
I don't think Facebook runs the lives of those around me as much as many people seem to think it does. Maybe it does in other social circles, but it's still on you. If you're dependent on Facebook, that's your problem and it's not really hard to put an end to it.
I hear people talking about Facebook a lot in a tone that sounds like they are making excuses. At the end of the day, if you really think you need it, that's fine but it's on you.
So you're asking people to beseech their friends to adopt regular usage of some alternative to Facebook (email, Jabber, Google, etc.) solely so that they can stay in contact. That's equivalent to asking someone "could you please go to my blog regularly to see if I have anything to say to you?".
There is a strong draw for many of us. It's the only reasonable way I have to see pictures and updates from my family that's pretty far flung across the world. Convincing all my kids, grandkids, siblings, cousins, in laws, nieces, nephews, etc to move away from FB isn't really practical. I do use FB mostly read only, but there isn't really a way for me to leave.
The threads in response to you are fascinating and mystifying. I'm not sure whom to respond to, since everyone seems to be saying some variation of the same thing: that Facebook is simply a necessity of modern life. I think I'm a pretty normal, fairly technical, member of society, and I've never found that to be the case. I turned down the first stage of Facebook invites in 2006 or 2007 or whenever. Honestly, at the time, I probably thought I'd spend too much time obsessing about my ex. I work in a fairly computerized environment (a university) and I've never felt particularly hermetic. We have friends, live in a city, I have and make professional connections, etc.
I'm 37, so maybe I'm not representative, and I'm willing to believe that my life might be a little more wife-and-kids-and-job-centric than some here. But I'm honestly a bit surprised by the claims that it's impossible to live without it. I'm willing to believe it, because it seems unlikely that this many people would be so wildly exaggerating, but it's surprising all the same. What are the elements of life that I live without that folks can't even conceive of living without?
No. The parent comment’s viewpoint is fine, whereas your absolutist viewpoint is not helpful.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are what you make of them. There’s nothing to “present” if you don’t mindlessly scroll but use them the way they were originally intended: to keep in touch with contacts. For some people it’s just easiest to keep in touch with them on Facebook, etc.
There also a lot of good Facebook groups, and marketplace is very useful.
Being able to stay in contact with people is extremely useful. Cutting that out entirely out of spite doesn’t do any good.
I suppose I can get real with you to make my point. My daughter lives in another state, and her mother's platform of choice is Facebook. I don't get to see her but once every couple weeks, so, if I want to regularly see what my daughter is up to (in a day-to-day sense vs. in a formal sense, like when I Facetime her daily), I _have_ to be on Facebook.
I realize such a situation is an outlier, but you must realize that if you could not conceive of this, there's probably many more situations you could not conceive of. For better or worse, things like Facebook are now a staple in our lives. If it means being able to follow along with my daughter's growing up, I'll subscribe to whatever the hell social network she's on.
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