Recently, a friend of mine made a post on why he's leaving facebook. Ordinarily, I dismiss such statements as the inevitable non-conformist outrage against anything that's actually simultaneously useful and popular... however, in this instance, considering the source, I actually read his reasoning.
I agree with his assessment of the facts, however I disagree with the conclusion. Briefly, he says that Facebook is the junk food of relationships: it emphasizes shallow, meaningless communication at the expense of deeper, more significant contact.
In my case, that's definitely true. I use facebook to comment on people whom I otherwise wouldn't interact with at all. I use it to notify people of important events in my life, and to stay informed of major events in their lives. In short, it makes the minimum effort to maintain a casual acquaintance very, very low.
I have long been of the belief that maintaining social relationships is a skill that requires considerable amounts of brainpower to maintain and hone. In some respects, it's just like any other complex skill: you have to keep at it if you want to become better at it. Facebook (and to a lesser extent, other social media) for me is like the graphing calculator of social relationships...sure, it'll help you pass calculus, but it won't actually help you learn math.
I find it extremely difficult to remember all the details necessary to be casual friends. I don't know when people's birthdays are... I don't know who they're dating (or married to), how many kids they have, what they do, or even where they live...This is not restricted to my casual friends. I have close friends whom I've known for a decade and a half who I barely remember their birthdays (despite them being within a week of mine). Facebook makes it unnecessary for me to remember all that. I can, when I post on their wall or comment on their status, look up all that supplemental information and give the illusion that I'm actually informed about their life. It doesn't help me actually be better friends with these people...but it provides a useful tool to make it easier for me to maintain a casual relationship.
I find that if I limit myself to people I interact with in real life, I tend to withdraw pretty significantly. There was definitely a period of my life when the only people I interacted with were my family and my wife. Facebook makes it hard to lapse into that. I don't think it has made any friendships deeper, but it definitely makes them easier to maintain.
In short, for someone who isn't "good" at the mechanics of friendship (at ALL), it lightens the load a bit; and that's enough reason for me to use it.
Also, I really like Bejeweled Blitz.
