November 28, 2010--Facebook

I have had so much fun with Facebook over the last few years since I joined. When I first started, there weren't a whole lot of other people that I knew on there. I couldn't find even one person that was from Missouri. There were several teens from the church we attended at the time that I friended, partly because we were in a drama together, and partly because they were the ones who told me about Facebook in the first place. At first I friended everyone I knew that I could find on there, and it really wasn't that many.

After awhile, more and more people joined Facebook. As my friends list grew, I added more and more people. I found homeschoolers from long ago, old friends I hadn't seen in ages and had lost contact with, and tons of people from here. Almost my entire family joined Facebook, even some of my distant relatives that I hadn't talked to or seen in a long time. I even found old boyfriends. As more and more people joined Facebook, I started not friending everyone I knew anymore. Facebook would suggest friends for me, and I would think, "Yeah, I know who they are, but I don't really know them. That kind of became my new criteria for deciding whether or not to friend someone. Of course, I was a little weaker on people who would send me friend requests, because I didn't really like rejecting people who wanted to be friends with me.

Recently I've been realizing that some of the people I friended way back then I never hear from or see on Facebook. Often it's because they don't even use Facebook. They started an account and then forgot about it. Other people I see, but I don't interact with them and don't really know them well. And there are others that even though I don't know them well anymore, I do enjoy keeping up with them.

It's difficult to develop a good system for deciding who should be a Facebook friend and who shouldn't be, but I have 423 friends now. I can't even see all of the wall posts and I miss stuff, because I have so many. I've decided to unfriend some of the ones that I don't interact with around the first of the year. It won't be an easy process, but I'll try not to cut out people who would actually miss seeing my posts. Of course, it's tricky to know who even falls in that category! I did post a status update about it, so hopefully the feedback I get will help me know who not to cut.