My use of Facebook

I got on the Facebook bandwagon late.  By late I mean halfway through my junior year of college.  I remember I was sitting in the "computer lab" of the community house I was staying at in Nicaragua while I was studying abroad and one of my fellow classmates was shocked to hear that I did not know what Facebook was.  She quickly helped me set up an account and the rest is history.

When I started using Facebook I will admit that I sunk my teeth in.  I saw it as a canvas for telling the entire world, or whoever was interested in reading, who I was and what I was all about.  My interests included EVERY SINGLE THING I enjoyed doing, plus some quirky things that I though would make people think that I was clever.  For example, one of my interests was something like, "teaching the world about poetry on bathroom stall walls."  Yah, really smooth Ted.  Real smooth.  My list of favorite movies and music were equally detailed as was my list of favorite quotes.  Basically, I wanted people to be able to find out whatever they wanted about me simply by looking at my Facebook page.

When I wasn't stroking my own ego with Facebook, I was attempting to reconnect with high school friends who had gone elsewhere for college or who had simply moved elsewhere for whatever reason.  It was very useful for that.  I did reconnect with a number of people.  It was so convenient to be able to find anyone, anywhere simply by typing their name into a huge search.  Once we were friends, I could ask them for their numbers so that we could reconnect over the phone and in some cases even reconnect in person.  This was very useful and I do owe a big thanks to Facebook for helping me to get in touch with people who I probably wouldn't have otherwise reconnected with.

Once I graduated from college I began using Facebook to stay in touch with friends who had moved.  A lot of times a full phone call wasn't necessary just to tell a friend that I heard a song that reminded me of them, and texts cost money.  I was also able to look through my friends photographs to see what they had been up to, but as expected, most of them were of my friends at bars.  Yah, Facebook has a plethoa of drunk photos.

For two years I worked with an Americorps position where I was stationed in a school working with high school students who were trying to get into college.  Once they graduated from high school and moved onto college, Facebook allowed me to stay in touch with them.  When they needed a letter of recommendation, they posted on my wall.  When they had a question about financial aid, they sent me a message.  When they posted incriminating photos of them doing God knows what, I was able to report those photos to Facebook and tell me former students to stop being stupid and think about how those photos could affect them in the future.  Yep, Facebook allowed me to be a watchdog.

I still use Facebook to stay in touch with friends, organize events, and occasionally post a random tidbit about my day, but I use it much less than I used to.  Well, not much less, but less.  I do still get bored while doing assignments.  To be honest, I checked Facebook once while I was writing this post.