Social Networking - Facebook

For you, is Facebook useful or a time-waster?

I have had a Facebook account for several years now and it can be both useful and a time-waster. It is useful for keeping in contact with friends, especially those people that you don't see often and people who live in other places. I love looking at photos that friends have posted of themselves and their families.

I have a friend in B.C. whose whole family is on Facebook; including her husband's senior parents and all of his siblings and their families. The 3 generations of this family keep in touch and share birthdays, pictures, etc. using Facebook. That is cool! I found out that a friend of mine had a sick baby and needed some support from her network of family and friends through Facebook. From these examples, you can see that I find Facebook and other social networking sites to be very good communication tools.

However, I do see some people using Facebook for many hours each day, playing all of the games and using many applications within Facebook. Some use of these Facebook extras (or apps) is a good way to relax for a period of time, which we all need to do. I also know people who are disabled and unable to get out of the house often, who use Facebook to interact with people daily. I think that it is easy to get carried away and forget how much time a person has spent doing some of these things. But then again, I can get carried away and forget how much time I have spent reading a good book, so who am I to judge?