Facebook is the devil

Why do we all love to waste hours of time on Facebook?

Why must we scour the ends of the website in search of random bits of information about our friends and family?

Since when has talking on the phone and in person been replaced by looking up somebody on Facebook and learning about them on a table of records? Why is that acceptable?

I recently did a multi genre research project on the social effects of Facebook on college students. The results basically make me want to delete my Facebook altogether.

I don't think that people surfing the site understand that any bit of information that they post on Facebook are still owned by the individual. All the information posted is owned privately by Facebook. Its nice that they give you options to delete, modify, and protect the information using privacy controls, because technically, its theirs and they can do whatever they want with it.

I don't know if I want random people to know that I'm addicted to Deadmau5, or that I like photography and the drums, or any of that information that seems so useless that I might as well post it anyway. Posting the information does give someone a personal identity on the Internet, and they do become more individualized as the amount of data they upload to the site increases. But putting all this data on the Internet could possibly come back to haunt someone. For example, having pictures of you and an ex-girlfriend you no longer associate with still uploaded to Facebook might mean that you're going to have people asking you about those pictures, and could stand as evidence against you in a legal issue. Or having "LGBT UNITED" as one of your groups up on Facebook might lead people to believe you are actually part of the LGBT community, altering their perceptions of you.

(But really, if people stop associating with you because you join a group based on alternate forms of sexuality, chances are that those people cannot handle being open minded about the connections and friends they make, and that probably casts more of a negative appeal to them than you)

I think social networking is pretty over rated, after thinking long and hard about it. I have a friend (who I will not name, because this person absolutely loves their privacy) that doesn't own a facebook. I used to question why my friend didn't, because this friend was one of the most popular people at my high school, and it seemed almost impossible for him to have so many connections without a facebook. I asked them about it several different times, and they responded with answers that really didn't make sense to me. At the time, I couldn't see myself without a Facebook: It was my second most used form of communication with my friends, following physical communication. I thought about it for months before I realized why:
If you don't have a facebook, your information won't be on the Internet for everyone to see, which in turn makes you mysterious. And this forces people to text you or call you to meet up, and this in turn makes people want to be with you. And because people are now coming to you through your cell phone, you can more easily choose who you want to respond to or not, giving you more control of your friends and personal information than facebook could ever give you. This is a good thing.
Not having a facebook makes you a more popular person in the long run, because the simple fact that people can't access all your personal information at once makes other people want to be with you. Its a bit of simple reverse psychology: people want that forbidden fruit, the thing they can't have. If people can't have your information, they will go to greater lengths to get it, which only means good things for you.

I might have to say goodbye to my Facebook. I want control.