Poll: Facebook friends

Percentage of Facebook friends I have physically seen in last 5 yrs

  • 0 to 20%

    Votes: 36 34.6%
  • between 20 and 40%

    Votes: 19 18.3%
  • between 40 and 60%

    Votes: 16 15.4%
  • between 60 and 80%

    Votes: 19 18.3%
  • between 80 and 100%

    Votes: 14 13.5%

  • Total voters
    104
  • Poll closed .
I live far away from many of the people I know well- family and close/old family friends. And I am rarely connecting on FB with people I work with...

so the people I see everyday are not the people which see my FB
and I am trying to minimize how much FB I use as well.
 
I have 182 friends, mostly from our church or one of the nonprofits I have volunteered with for the past 10 years. No college friends, but a handful from elementary and high school - I hadn't seen most of them in 20 years but saw a few at our 40th reunion last year. Only one person that I haven't ever met - he saw me posting on a page related to our (very small) hometown and turns out he used to live in the house that my grandmother was raised in and had some items of hers that he wanted to mail to me. (No one from the extended family still lives in the area.) Very sweet.
 
MB, that story reminds me of definitely the weirdest friend request I got, from a guy in Australia. He'd had a summer romance decades earlier with a lady that shares my first and maiden name and hometown, and wanted to know if I was her. She's a bit older than me, but I was happy to put him in touch with her, as we'd crossed paths before (weirdly, we also share the same birth month and day). And no, she didn't run off and hook up with him again, though that would have added some sauce to my story. :)
 
Ground Hog Day?


Oops. Went to the 40th, planning to attend the 45th.

Forgot to mention- two of my FB contacts are deceased. In one case the family deliberately kept the page open and just yesterday they were posting because it was her birthday. Not sure why the other is still active other than the legwork involved. I had my late Ex's profile removed from LinkedIn because it just seemed weird that it was still there. I also sent a note to a couple of his contacts that I knew.
 
I signed up for Facebook way back in 2004... when it was restricted to college e-mail addresses and linked everyone through their HS classes. It was very common at the time to friend everyone from your HS class (mine had 550). At one point facebook even established these friendships by default, without you even clicked accept (funny to think the public lashing they would get today for doing that). Every year or so I will prune some more out of my list, but I still have A LOT of them that I haven't seen in 15 years... I'm at about 400 friends (maybe half of those are still from that initial HS class mix), and maybe only 60-80 of my friends on FB I see on a yearly basis.

This poll is an interesting one. It really got me thinking. What is the point to having someone on facebook who I haven't seen in a decade? Maybe a cousin who lives overseas... but that random pal from HS who I might see once or twice the rest of my life at reunions. What's the point?

One final point I like to make to people is... it seems over the years facebook has become a place that people think they own. It's their data and their photos and their ideas. I am constantly reminding folks that Facebook is a place you GIVE that stuff away to. Sure they give you the false sense of privacy by allowing you to check some boxes however the company could actually just release it all at any point if they wanted. It would be PR suicide to do so, however the point is it's not your data... it belongs to them.

Lessons for my daughters as they get older... anything you post online is public domain, even if you think it isn't.
 
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I don't have any Facebook friends that I haven't seen in the last five years. But, then, I have no Facebook friends period. No Facebook account either. So, I can't figure if the answer to the question is 100% or 0%.
 
Penelope Trunk posted an article to day on "How to look younger for your career" by different age groups. I thought this would fit into this discussion on Facebook.

Speak their language. Let’s call this generational code switching. If you’re in your 40s you could try doing a lot less work at work. The Economist reports that after polling representatives of all three generations, it turns out that Gen Xers (entering their 40s) work much harder than Millennials (entering their 30s). If you’re in your 50s you can fake people out by wearing a Bernie Sanders sticker, because old people like Hillary. If you’re in your 30s you could try ditching Facebook and act like the younger generation that thinks Facebook is stupid. <my emphasis>
 
Alas, I found myself in the 20-40% group, actually closer to 20 than 40, so I took this post as a prompt to clean some of the deadwood out of my Friends list.

Now close to 40% that I've seen and talked with in the last five years, but still not great. One of these days I'll clean it out some more.

I spend an average of 20-30 minutes a week on Facebook, so I don't get to see much of the drivel people post. OTOH, DW spends that much per day on it and loves keeping up with friends that way. Different strokes.
 
I don't have any Facebook friends that I haven't seen in the last five years. But, then, I have no Facebook friends period. No Facebook account either. So, I can't figure if the answer to the question is 100% or 0%.

+1
 
Although I've got nearly 300 FB linkages, I'm still in the 80%+ category. I joined primarily because club event notices were posted there.

Over 1/4 of the 300 are family, and given reunions and funerals, I've seen pretty much all of them within the last 5 years (there are still a few dead ones in there though).

40% are people I've seen recently from the social events I attend (clubs) that haven't moved away, or lost interest in the clubs.

35% are people I probably will never see again(PNSA), but only about half of those are older than 5 years, so the answer to the poll came in at 85% in the last 5 years.

Of the PNSA, there are one or two that I've never met in person, and a couple of high school friends. But the majority of the PNSA crowd were previous club members that fell-out. The rest were people I met traveling and we exchanged pictures. Facebook doesn't load me with those folks' posts, but when it does give me one, usually it's interesting (they're traveling again). I don't toss these aside...you never know when you'll need some local G2, and having people all over the place that remember you and that you can ask about something in their geography is kind of nice.
 
I don't have any Facebook friends that I haven't seen in the last five years. But, then, I have no Facebook friends period. No Facebook account either. So, I can't figure if the answer to the question is 100% or 0%.

Me either. My husband is on facebook- has been for a few years, and I have seen nothing on his page that makes me want to have one. I'm just private I guess. I stay in touch with my friends by calling them or actual visits IN PERSON.
 
I get such a kick out of the occasional funny or beautiful things that people post, it's worth scrolling past the many screeds and piles of drivel. Being a fast scanner/reader helps.

For example: A cousin retired recently and now posts dozens of sappy homilies and "what kind of dog were you in a previous life" posts every day. It's worth scrolling past this nonsense, just to see the family photos and news she also posts.

I've only unfriended one person for posts that went beyond my particular pale. My pale is pretty high, so it takes a lot to go beyond it. But somehow, she managed.

Amethyst
 
Most of my Facebook friends are family, and a few old high school or Air Force friends. I mainly enjoy seeing the family photos that are posted. I've blocked a few as the election season brings out the loons.
 
I have no interest in FB. I tried it for a few days several years ago, and as Betty White said in her monologue in her 2010 Saturday Night Live appearance, I found it a big waste of time. I quickly deleted the account I hadn't really done anything to.
 
I've blocked a few as the election season brings out the loons.
I've added a tool called FB Purity which hides posts on any keywords you select. It seems to work pretty good. The only ones that sneak through are when the poster slips-through an image concerning politics, but without any comment or caption (those are the people I have to hide).
 
I have 127 facebook friends. I have seen at least 90% of them, maybe 95% within the last 5 years. One person, I have never met. Three people are now deceased. I have three people on the Acquaintance List, so that they don't see my posts and I don't see their posts. I have only unfriended one person. He was a good friend, almost like a brother to me, when he was in the service with my DH. We were in our 20's and he was single, so we would have him for holiday dinners, we played games, bowled on the same league team and he was constantly at our house. We lost touch for many years, but hooked back up due to Facebook. I hated the stuff that he posted during the last presidential election and finally unfriended him. He got in touch with my DH and told him that he was devastated that I did this. I have since learned to tell facebook that I want to see less stuff like this and not to post anything from whatever link people are using. It still makes me feel bad that I unfriended my former friend.
 
I log on to waste some time. I am friends with one couple and they wish each other happy birthday/valentines day et al on FB. How sick is that? They live together! When anyone starts posting picture of restaurant food, they are removed. No invitations to play games. No political commentary.
 
I get such a kick out of the occasional funny or beautiful things that people post, it's worth scrolling past the many screeds and piles of drivel. Being a fast scanner/reader helps.

My pale is pretty high, so it takes a lot to go beyond it.

What she said.
 
I log on to waste some time. I am friends with one couple and they wish each other happy birthday/valentines day et al on FB. How sick is that? They live together! When anyone starts posting picture of restaurant food, they are removed. No invitations to play games. No political commentary.

Sounds reasonable. I don't use Facebook nor intend to. My wife does and sometimes mentions activity of some "friends". Mostly, I just laugh at the stupid pictures of food and pets. Not my style.
 
I just did a quick look over my FB friends. I have 752, but after reviewing a chunk of the list, I'd say I'm definitely over 80%. I travel a lot for my various hobbies and have made lots of friends (being as extroverted as I am!) and see most of them at least once a year, if not more. The people that fall into the haven't seen in more than 5 years are high school people, although that's a small number. If I had gone to my 20th reunion, then really the only people I haven't seen in 5 years are a few old co-workers that I friended because we were close when I worked with them.

I've been fairly liberal with the "hide" feature. They're not unfriended, but I just don't see their posts unless I go stalk them deliberately. Mostly people who only post "inspirational" messages, pictures of their kids every 10 minutes, supremely negative/annoying posts, etc.

I don't post too often (once a month maybe?), but I love some of my friends on there. One person I see periodically (because we're not great "friends" in real life) posts HILARIOUS stories of his daily escapades.
 
My FB account has exactly 2 "friends."

One was a casual acquaintance who sent me a FB invite years ago, and not wanting to be rude, I foolishly created a FB account for the sole purpose of accepting her invitation. That was a mistake, for I got all sorts of useless updates ("hey, I am working out at the gym!"), family pics, stupid jokes and little nuggets of "wisdom" about life, family, work, etc. The other "friend" is a college classmate.

I haven't seen or spoken to either in many years and don't give a crap about them. I should delete the account, but I'm too lazy to even make that effort.

For me, FB is a complete and utter waste of time.

Lucky Dude
 
When you find out how to delete your account, let us know!

That made me look it up out of curiousity (no need for me to delete, as the account's existence doesn't bother me and is occasionally useful). There apparently is no easy, one-step way to do this. "Deactivating" puts you into a hidden limbo and is straightforward; but to permanently delete, you need to contact facebook and have them assist you in the process: https://www.facebook.com/help/www/359046244166395/ and https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account?rdrhc
 
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