Facebook Generation

I recently came off of Facebook (totally), deleting all photo albums, untagging, the whole deal!  The main reason was that it was taking/wasting too much of my time, plus I knew that changes were coming again and I couldn’t be bothered with a load of resets.  Finally it’s been the increase in advertising and how everything you now do on it is logged for targeted advertising and I don’t need or want to be ‘sold’ something every day!

Anyway, that’s partly an aside to the post, but also has lead to it’s reason.

Over the festive period I was discussing with my brother-in-law (also an IT person) about my decision, and how a number of organisations claim ‘membership’ by forcing people to have their email addresses etc.  This then led onto the question of whether, at least in the short term, it is possible to ‘survive’ without Facebook.

Now before anyone shouts out saying ‘of course you can, I’ve never had Facebook’, clearly it’s possible and I’m doing a load more useful stuff since ditching it (like this), but that wasn’t really the focus of the discussion.  It was more aimed at how ‘invasive’ Facebook has become.  For instance, there are some things now that you need to be on Facebook to participate in.  I had a survey that I wanted to do the other day to see what my ‘carbon footprint’ was like.  The easiest way of doing it was for me to have been a Facebook user.  Not being so meant that I had to either scrap it, or go though a lengthy registration process.  Now I know that’s not quite the same as needing to be on Facebook, but how long will be it be before that does start happening?  The fact that organisations now divide the world into Facebook users and ‘the rest’ is telling.

I won’t be going back, I’ve far more time and am enjoying the freedom too much.  Does that mean I’ll get ‘left out’ of some things.  Well time will tell I suppose.