What Do You Use Facebook For?

Earlier this week, I was perusing Facebook, sucking the life from my poke-happy fingers, when I happened to notice how many Facebook "Friends" I had.

773

I always knew my number was fairly high, but I was too lazy to comb through and endure a mass delete-a-thon. I joined Facebook back in 2004 when it was strictly for poor college kids who realized its worth because it was free. Since then, I don't think I've done a single clean-up on my Friends list.

Shane has always maintained the stance that having so many people on Facebook as your "Friend" isn't necessarily a good thing. 773 people were exposed to my endless photo-stream of my children. 773 were exposed to every single BLR link I shared (and there have been a LOT of them). 773 were getting a much more vivid and thorough look into my life than I felt comfortable with.

So I did a little cleaning.

620 people's worth of cleaning.

That's right. I deleted 620 people from my Facebook, leaving me with a grand total of 153...and I feel great about it!

Scrolling through that large list made me think, what do I even use Facebook for and who do I want seeing what I do with it? I enjoy my carefree posting style about my family and spamming the newsfeed with as many Instagram'd pictures as I can. But do I want 773 people having access to that?

The answer was a resounding NO.

An unforeseen benefit of removing so many people is that I find I'm spending much less time on Facebook. Heck, it's only been a few days so I can't say whether or not that will be permanent, but let's pretend it is. Without the 773 status updates, photos, shares, links, and game notifications (just STOP asking me to play Candy Crush already), I get to read about things from people who are currently active in my life.

So if I "unfriended" you on Facebook, it's nothing personal! It just means that Facebook was the only thing connecting us, and in a world where technology brings us all together, I'd like to try to also keep part of the human connection intact.

What do you use Facebook for?