Facebook: Gone.

My Facebook experience was long ago, before the first tidal wave of protests about their privacy policies changed things. Opt out options were well hidden. I understand that it is possible to use it quite reasonably now, but the prior experience, early on, left a level of distrust that I have no compelling reason to attempt to overcome. I email people from SE Asia to Europe, but email it still my preferred method to stay in touch. When I travel I do use Skpe, and not uncommonly buy time to call from a computer to a land line. But as with other things online, I don't stay constantly available; when I'm done, I sign out. Hell! I don't even keep my cell phone on unless I've arranged to meet up with someone at an as yet unspecified location while I'm out and we need to connect by and by to accomplish that.

I love the choices we have that make staying in touch easier, but I'm only interested in a few of them.
 
LOL. I only have 34 friends on FB and they are people I WANT to socialize with, not a hundred people I don't really know or want to keep in touch with just to say I have xxx# of friends.

I have 43, but I just counted 14 I could unfriend due to having no contact for a couple of years and no liklihood of having any going forward. But "unfriending" just seems like a sort of cold act that I don't see any need to do. I have all input from those people turned off anyway. So I guess I functionally have a little under 30, which is more than enough. I have a handful of old high school buddies who I'd "friend" if they were on FB, but I'm in touch with them already anyway - always plenty of baseball related email threads where we give each other a hard time about how bad each other's teams are - just like in high school... ;) Other than that, everyone I have any desire to be friends with, I am. Absolutely no desire to be FB friends with people I don't know just to "collect" them....

-Ray
 
I've never been on Facebook and have been getting along just fine. I guess I'm still technically a part of Google+ but I keep it just to have a log in for some sites that require it. I have essentially zeroed out any information about me and have opted out of targeted advertising. But I keep Gmail as my junk/spam e-mail account. And has anybody ever found LinkedIn to be truly useful? I've really tightened up access there and I'm seriously considering cancelling the account.

Social media may work for many people and that's fine. And I can see its uses if one owned a business. But, for me, it's just another way to clutter my life and give away too much personal information. Young people are much more comfortable with giving away that information. That's understandable. They've been raised in an age in which expectations for privacy are almost non-existent - and they've yet to experience the consquences of giving away that information. But life can can come with some hard lessons.

I've worked in traditional media - radio and television - for a long time. I now work with one foot in traditional media and another in new media. And I'm usually an early adapter (or the next wave behind that) of new technology. So I'm no luddite. But most social media to me simply represents noise. Advertisers will tell you that's why they ignore older demographics (anyone over age 54 or so). They're set in their ways and are "resistant" to the message. I say it's just that we've learned what is useful and/or enjoyable to us and what is not.
 
Found this during some casual reading

"A new study is reportedly the first to correlate high Facebook usage with poor body image in young women. Researchers from the University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and the University of Iowa surveyed 881 college women in the U.S., asking them questions about their Facebook usage, exercise, eating habits and body image. They found that the more selfies women were exposed to via social media, the more likely they were to think negatively about their own appearance and bodies. "Spending more time on Facebook is not connected to developing a bad relationship with food, but there is a connection to poor body image," said Petya Eckler of the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland. "The attention to physical attributes may be even more dangerous on social media than on traditional media because participants in social media are people we know. These comparisons are much more relevant and hit closer to home. Yet they may be just as unrealistic as the images we see on traditional media."

from Pluggedin online
 
Its short, but worth looking. I think it says it all and then some.

[video=vimeo;70534716]

hmmm...interesting video. He makes statements and suppositions without support, and it feels to me like a College Sr's video project, but I do have to admit that some of it rings true.
 
I only made a Facebook account so I could administer the account at an old place of work. Since then I only have three friends on Facebook, all connected with that job which is long since over. It's nice to be able to see how those friends are doing, but I have no use for it otherwise. My use of forums is very great, as evidenced by the amount of time I spend reading and often posting, so that's all the online social stuff I need.
 
As others here have noted, Facebook is what you make it. Want cats 24/7? Like a whole bunch of cat pages. Want dogs? Do likewise. You could, if you wanted, make it all about photography.
 
I got on facebook, just recently, mainly because lots of businesses require that to see their announcements and stuff. Even restaraunts require an account just to look at a menu. I put very little information on it and I use it just too keep up with friends.
 
For someone like me who's just transplanted to where I am now, fb has been very beneficial. Most of my family is in another country, and the only way I get up to speed with what everyone is up to is through facebook. Skype is mostly secondary as it is very hard to put even myparents and sisters in one room at the same time -- they each have their own lives.

I see videos of my nieces'/nephews' graduation/first communion/etc (and vice versa) -- I know it doesn't replace being there -- but who has $1800 per person to go back home even every year (and I have a family of 5)? I can easily send a message to any of them and easily get a reply back -- not everyone in the world has an iPhone/iMessage/money to send text internationally.

As what others have told here, it is what you make it. I have a ton of private photos/videos -- I know not all of my friends are interested in every teeny tiny moment of my baby, but his grandma demands a picture of his first tooth/first step/just everyday stuff -- basically an album a day. :D I have a number of groups - family, relatives, high school friends, college friends; and yes, it might take extra effort to maintain, but the pay-off is worth it.
 
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