To Facebook or Not to Facebook

Lately, I've been thinking about the benefits versus the issues that come with having a facebook. I recently read an article by someone who spent a year without using facebook--to my surprise, she lived. I don't, for the life of me, remember what I did before Facebook. But, the superficial friendships and the lack of any commonly accepted rules on the site get to me every once in awhile.

I mean, do I really have 387 friends? No, no I don't. And I've deleted some 100+ friends in the past month. And do I have to add my boss if they ask to be my friend? Do I have to add my grandmother? My husband's aunt? My 10 year old nephew? If I add all those people, then I have to watch what I say because what I'd like to say may not be condusive to what my grandmother and my 10 year old nephew should be reading, or my boss to be knowning. And doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having a profile when nothing you say or do is actually what you'd like to say or do?



But, if you don't use facebook, it's like your missing out on everything. You can't see when other people get married, have children, move, or (the worst) die. And how am I supposed to know if my child is cute without 300 people hitting "like" on their pictures?

I try really hard to keep my profile private. Everything on it is set to "friends only" and my profile is unsearchable. But, that doesn't seem to really matter--I can't stop myself from showing up in other people's "people you may know" section, I can't stop friends of my friends from seeing things I put on their walls or pictures they put up of me. Everytime my friends and I go out we have "posting rules" with photos--we can't risk the whole world seeing everything we do.

Keeping connected is great, but I often wonder if it's truly worth the stress and the fakeness that tends to come along with it.

Thoughts?