[Sir_Cmpwn]

>No matter what I do, several activities and groups I want to be a part of are only advertised and organized on facebook. It's not within my power to change that.

It is. You have the power to choose what you want to be a part of. And these groups have more members than yourself - people who you can ask to help you stay up to date on meetings and such.

[debaserab2]

I'm sorry, but get real. People use technology because it assists and speeds up areas of their life. For many people, facebook far and away is the most convenient way to manage their social life simply because they have the greatest adoption within their social groups.

Yes, we could "write someone a letter in the mail instead" or "ask a friend about the events on facebook" but that would defeat the point for the vast majority of us that aren't interested in spending hours managing our social contacts and calendars. You're not really giving solutions when you suggest things like that.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

The point I'm making is thus: if you acknowledge that Facebook is a bad influence on your life but you feel stuck with it, here's a low risk strategy for dipping your toes into life without it that you can try out.

I don't spend hours managing my social contacts and calendars and I still feel connected with my family and my friends without Facebook.

I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit.

[komali2]

>I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit.

I feel like if I applied the logic you're using here for that, I could say the same thing about buying food in a store.

"It is legal to hunt. There's nothing stopping you from going into the woods, killing a deer, and salting its meat other than your own dependency on the conveniences of the modern era."

I mean, at some point, we have to accept that the world is becoming a lot easier to live in.

I'm curious what era you grew up in - were you around when literally the only way to get a hold of someone was hope they're home for a phone call? It sucked. I genuinely believe people that disagree are wearing rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. Back then, my only friends could be the ones that went to my highschool, or lived in my neighborhood. In a city like Houston, that's quite the restriction - my sister can have friends from all over the city, as far as Pasadena or even Sugarland! Impossible when I was a kid.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

>I feel like if I applied the logic you're using here for that, I could say the same thing about buying food in a store.

Well, a grocery store isn't really harmful in the way Facebook is. Grocery stores aren't tracking you in every other store you go to and selling that information to the highest bidder, they aren't tracking when you're asleep and awake and everything you use on your phone and they aren't designed to keep you addicted and in the store for as many of your waking hours as possible. You could point out that they might do things like put sugary foods in prominent places but you can always exercise self control and go to the healthier choice - but there's no equivalent Facebook "lite:. Even if grocery stores were all of these things it'd be a lot more reasonable to suggest the farmer's market before hunting. Facebook is demonstrably harmful, grocery stores are not.

>I'm curious what era you grew up in - were you around when literally the only way to get a hold of someone was hope they're home for a phone call? It sucked.

I'm 25 years old, and I definitely lived through and remember a lot of time when the internet was not ubiquitous and calling your friends up was the best way to reach them (I remember the rise of texting, too). It really wasn't bad at all.

>Back then, my only friends could be the ones that went to my highschool, or lived in my neighborhood. In a city like Houston, that's quite the restriction - my sister can have friends from all over the city, as far as Pasadena or even Sugarland! Impossible when I was a kid.

I don't use Facebook today and I still have friends around the world. Hell, in two weeks I'm flying out to Tokyo and crashing on a friend's couch for two weeks and seeing a concert - and we managed to arrange that without Facebook.

[compiler-guy]

Apparently your social circles don't use facebook as much as other people's do. That's great that you can make it work for you. But don't project your social world onto every one else's.

Also, I keep seeing the, "Facebook isn't worth the tradeoff" argument coming up. That may be true, but again, that is a different claim than, "It is easy to live without it."

re: Your note below that you are suggesting others give it a try:

I did that for years. I counted on getting invites via text message or email. I organized things myself without it. I really did give it a go. I still missed out on way more than I wanted to.

I finally joined facebook about six months ago. I'm very careful about what I share, both with other facebook users and the company itself.

I hate many things about facebook. But what I can't deny is that I am much more connected with many more people than I was before. There is no comparison.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

I'm only talking about my experiences and suggesting others give it a try.

[tripzilch]

You could ONLY say the same thing about buying food in a store if, given that all the other arguments were refuted or shown weak, you came up with "but I fear I will lose my shopping buddies".

In addition, unlike supermarkets, FB use is actually addictive, it is very much designed to be that way. This is not a point of discussion any more.

For instance, your era with the nostalgia glasses, sure it sucked (depending where you lived I guess). But FB use was not the thing that changed it. That was mobile phones, and if you lived in that era you know this very well. That's a couple of decades of technology you're skipping over to justify your FB use.

[michaelmrose]

Do you know the internet was a thing in the 90s?

[komali2]

Yes, late 90's, AIM was a thing... if my mom wasn't on the phone, or if my dad didn't need the computer for work. Didn't help me early 90's and certainly didn't help me figure out if my friend was home before I made the bike ride over :P

[tripzilch]

And then FB came along and suddenly everything was better.

... Except it didn't go like that at all, a zillion other options came along, pagers, mobile phones + texting, email, a whole bunch of instant messaging networks, all of which worked increasingly well for the problems your FB use is supposedly uniquely solving, yet none of was addictive like FB use, a machine learning algorithm targeting flaws in the human psyche / attention-mechanism / dopamine-treadmill to keep them "engaged" and instilling the fear of ostracism if they ever dare to leave.

You can defend convenient channels of communication, but you can't defend the package FB wraps it in.

Sir_Cmpwn said,

> I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit.

Scarily so.

[debaserab2]

Or, perhaps, just maybe people have different social lives and expectations within a social group that yours don't share. Just maybe.

[compiler-guy]

I joined facebook less than six months ago. I know quite well what life is like without it. My social life is quite a bit better now than it was before. And yes, I really did try.

Although I hate, hate, hate certain parts of it, there is absolutely zero doubt that it has been beneficial on balance.

[lkozma]

Yes, your last point seems quite accurate -- smokers often complain that they would like to stop smoking, but don't want to miss out on the social connections it entails.

[white-flame]

The problem is that those assistance & speed-up effects are directly tangible, but the addictiveness, echo chamber, and privacy effects aren't quite so apparent.

It's not a clear net positive just because of those conveniences, and there are no current "solutions" to give as everything you list is far more relevant to network effects than technical feature set. (e.g. in the past, using Facebook made you an outlier, why not just use email lists/myspace/phone calls/etc like everyone else?) A path to an alternative would be through Facebook collapsing (unlikely on their own), another social media site out-marketing Facebook, or establishing your own small networking effect under different assumptions.

[michaelmrose]

You could offer to assist in making information about said events available on multiple platforms. You could help everyone and yourself simultaneously.

[wott]

> I'm sorry, but get real. People use technology because it assists and speeds up areas of their life.

Get real: people waste a lot more time on 'tech' than they save, compared to doing without. The goal of most of those 'techs' is to take up as much of your time as possible, that's the foundation of their business.

[pessimizer]

I don't think that you can mention that a site people spend 4 hours a week browsing isn't a significant time saver compared to calling people and leaving texts.

[compiler-guy]

I never said I didn't have the power to choose not to be a part of these groups. The point is that I want to be a part of them, and doing that without facebook is 10x the additional friction.

Yes, I could ask someone to forward me the notices, and activities, but how do you propose I participate in the discussions of what to do?

When the voting via facebook poll happens, how do you propose I make my voice heard.

Now, you could argue that facebook isn't worth it. (And that is a perfectly reasonable position to take.) But that is a different position than, "It's easy to make these things work without facebook."