Question: Am I wasting my life on Facebook?

This is the question…being a stay-at-home parent, I have many, many, very, very brief opportunities to log on, and log on I do. All day long.

So what does that mean?

I didn’t start out on Facebook looking for anybody. But my stepsister got me started on it, and my stepcousin soon followed, and before I knew it many, many people I knew over 35 were on it and looking to reconnect with their pasts. And that includes me.

And reconnect I have. There have been high and low points. Mostly high. There have been a small handful of old connections that have restarted much to my delight. College friends, especially, have popped up. At first it’s hard to imagine that you have anything in common with people you either got drunk with or puked on two decades ago, but somehow, time’s eternal march has treated many of us in similar fashion: we are married or otherwise attached, we have kids, we work, we play, we get wrinkles. It’s endlessly fascinating to me to see what has become of blasts from my past. Clearly, thousands of other people agree.

I fought it at first. I tried to resist it as another fad for the youngins, but I just couldn’t resist looking up people from my high school days, if only to say hi or see what they look like or who THEIR friends are. My sister sent me a link to a guy we went to high school with and it yielded all sorts of people we thought we’d never even remember, but did. I didn’t do anything about it, but it was fun in a voyeuristic way. It amazes me the things people will put on their sites.

Facebook is fast becoming my crack, nearly eclipsing Coke Zero. I check it compulsively, and if someone I know is on, and I have more than 30 seconds, I end up talking to them whether they like it or not.

But what’s the etiquette on this? I mean, if you see that someone is online, do you chat with them? Do you attempt to engage them just because they’re there? Or do you wait to be engaged? I don’t know.

There are some people to whom I am now facebooked, and except for signing up as friends, there is zero communication between us. What’s up with that? Why connect with someone if you don’t want to, um, connect with them? Like for example someone I know “friended” me and then I accepted and then some time later I saw he was online so I went on and said hi. He was flabbergasted that I would write. Granted it had been a few years since we’d seen each other, but we hadn’t parted on negative terms, at least not that I know of…and HE had friended me! So are we hood ornaments or are we people?

Anyway, the whole Facebook protocol is fascinating and endlessly perplexing. I’m sure some people are just “collecting” friends, and I have to admit that when you call on someone and they only have one or two friends, or worse, NO friends, you feel really shitty for them. But it could be that they actually have something better to do with their lives than idly search the web for old friends and acquainatances. Just a hunch.

So I’m not criticizing people who use Facebook, and I’m not concerned that others are passing it by. It’s just becoming fairly ubiquitous and if it’s affecting Gen Xers, then what of our kids? Will all of their friendships be based online? Will they actually ever see anyone face to face, instead of book to book? Will they just enjoy virtual relationships, hook-ups and break ups without getting up off the couch?

I should probably be concerned.

Or maybe I'll just go look for another new old friend. They're out there.