Facebook. This is the leading social networking site on the web today. It is a website where you can chat with friends, comment on various statuses and pictures, connect with new and old friends, and where you can keep your family from out of town up-to-date. It is also a very annoying burden. You are expected, by friends and family alike, to check your page multiple times a day to see what they have posted. You have to like the appropriate statuses and pictures, friend only certain people, chat with the cool kids from Science, and post about every little detail and issue in your life. If not, you are considered a social outcast, or in this case, a social networking outcast. This is not a problem for most teens and adults because research shows that 175 million people check their Facebook every day. Those people are bound to reach the top of the news feed where people like me, who rarely post a thing and have 1/8 of the friends that most users have, sit comfortably at the bottom of the news feed, wanting only those closest to us to feel the need to read what we post.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Facebook is a bad thing. I am merely pointing out the flaw of Facebook being a brainwashing site used for one’s personal gain in the popularity scale. Like I said, it’s not all bad. Not everyone has to use it for personal gain. Take my grandmother, for instance. She uses Facebook to reconnect with her high school classmates and her grandchildren. She has one picture, about one wall post a month (if she remembers), and just about 45 friends. Now that is a good way to use Facebook.

It doesn’t matter if you have 100 friends or 1,000 friends, ‘cause chances are you don’t even know 300 of them, and you should really only share things with people who care. I’m sure that guy you friended, who sat three seats down from you at that football game and whom you said “Excuse me” to as you passed by him, doesn’t care that you just bought the new Ugg boots from Nordstroms. He also doesn’t care that you are having a sleepover with your BFF Mary in two hours. Truthfully, I bet only 50 of your friends would even read those statuses, if they cared.

Facebook is used more like a diary. In fact, before you post a status, it asks what’s on your mind? I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg didn’t mean that question literally. Twitter, another popular social networking site, had the brilliant idea to put a 140-character limit per tweet. Now, that doesn’t stop those tweeters from tweeting a thousand times a minute, but it’s the thought that counts. Why didn’t Facebook put a limit on status length? Well, actually they did, but it is highly unreachable, even for the most skilled status updaters. The word limit is 63,206 words per status. Per status! That is crazy. I couldn’t even put that many words in a book if I tried. And personally, I think books deserve more words than silly Facebook statuses anyway.

I mean it when I say this, Facebook isn’t all that bad. I think it would be much more enjoyable if these people took some advice and got a diary to write all of their problems and thoughts in. Just something to consider, for all you Facebook users out there.

Coming back to my main point, do you understand what Facebook is about? If not, try getting a profile for yourself. But remember three main things: It is not a diary, not everyone wants to know everything, and do not friend strange boys you do not know.