Facebook

Last week I joined the world of Facebook, an internet social networking site. I was moved to do this by meeting a 29 year-old minister who, like most of his age group, is very much tuned in to electronic media—blog, twitter, e-mail, Blackberry, as well as Facebook. I Googled his church website and found a link to Facebook. So now, for better or for worse, I’m in.

I say “for better or for worse” because Facebook exerts a strong pull to get more and more involved. It is what web analysts call “sticky.” You start by joining as a friend of one person. Then you see others you know on their “Wall,” and you link up with them. Then other people see you there and they link up with you, if you grant them permission. Facebook also suggests potential friends based on those you already have. And you can search for people you know by various means and add them to your list if they are already on Facebook. (175,000,000 people are.) It tends to mushroom. I now have thirty-two friends, but some of them have as many as 700. The typical Facebook user spends 169 minutes a week on the site—almost three hours. (See the article “How Facebook Is Taking Over Our Lives,” Fortune, March 2, 2009, p. 49, at http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/16/technology/hempel_facebook.fortune/index.htm )

Facebook was started in 2004 by Mark Zukerberg, a Harvard student who dropped out and spent his college money to build the site. He is now 24 and CEO of a company that is valued at between 3 billion and 15 billion dollars. The site was originally aimed at his friends in the 18 to 24 age group, but today the fastest growing group of users is women 55 and up. I have found a dozen of my high-school classmates from the class of ’56. The site is also very popular with teenagers. When my sixteen-year-old granddaughter saw I was on Facebook she wrote on my wall, “Now you are a hip and happenin’ grandpa.” Seventy percent of users are outside the U.S. and many use the site in languages other than English.

All of this can be very valuable. It can keep you in touch with people you might otherwise neglect or lose from awareness. It provides contact and information about them, including photos and videos, though most Facebook postings are brief and tend to be trivial. It can have a spiritual dimension, if you are moved to pray for your friends and give thanks for them as you come across their postings. On the other hand, it is hard to control—where do you stop? It can be addictive. A TV feature this week told of people who have had to kick the Facebook habit because it was damaging their lives. I have also heard of people giving it up for Lent as a spiritual discipline.

Regardless of the dangers, I'm in. I think it’s great, and it will be especially valuable when I go to the old folks home. If you don’t come to visit me, I’ll see you on Facebook.