I recently stopped using Facebook so often. And now because it seems like a lot of ppl still use it... I somehow have lost touch with people.

Granted, if I really cared about these people, wouldn't I have tried to talk one on one with them in some other medium anyways? However.. that does take a lot of time.. I don't know.

I stopped using Facebook because I had some friends who decided I was emotionally exhausting and didn't want any part of my friendship anymore. But we're still Facebook friends. That's because I didn't ultimately confront them about it... I just got a vibe that was what was going on. Then another friend who was also leaving the city to live back with her parents, who I trust, told me that they thought I was emotionally exhausting and thought they didn't want to hang out with me anymore. I didn't ask her for details because I was feeling really sensitive and didn't want to go off the deep end by hearing how it might have come up. Or if it was mentioned off hand.. I would have felt better about it.. but I didn't want to take the chance either way. I took that as truth and haven't tried talking to them since. And they haven't talked to me either.

But the thing is... WE'RE STILL FACEBOOK FRIENDS. It's so weird. I thought about removing them from it.. but I figured why bother. If you remove one friend from the circle, then you'd have to remove that entire social circle because it would be awkward and obvious otherwise. But I didn't want to go to all that trouble.

So I just stopped using Facebook altogether.

As far as quality of life, I don't think much has changed with me using Facebook less. Actually, I think it's improved in that I'm not seeing the other "perfect" snapshots of other people's lives... and that I'm not posting any of those because I'm not having many of those right now!

Honestly, Facebook is just built on everyone's pride. i.e. Here this is me doing this. Me and this person are together. My family is making a snowman !(see picture). It's other people sharing their lives and getting positive reinforcement for doing it by "likes".

What are everyone else's thoughts on Facebook?
What do you get out of it, or what don't you get out of it?

What do you do to substitute Facebook?