No. But, it is fun to find old friends, and it can be very entertaining. I have found cousins I never knew existed. My husband found friends from jr high, which is a big deal, he was raised outside of America and had no way to easily contact them until facebook.

A lot of us use Facebook, I don’t think many of us own it.

As for whether it’s necessary, what one considers necessary is a matter of personal preference.

It’s not necessary and if you don’t want to use it, then don’t.
And welcome to Fluther!

You don’t own it, the site owns it. You use it via your profile. Like @JLeslie said, it’s fun to find old friends and keep in touch with people without having to send a whole email every time you want to say hi. It’s a way to keep track of who got married, who got a new job, and many more mundane details that may or may not be interesting to you.

No, it isn’t.

Set up an account and then, yes, ‘go on with your life.’ You’ll find many old friends and family and get to talk with them everyday. I love it.

Only ~10% of the world’s population have a facebook account. The other 90% don’t seem to be too unhappy about not having one; most of them are more concerned about how they are going to feed their family tomorrow, I suspect.

Only if you really enjoy being told completely useless tidbits about other’s lives every 5 minutes.

Never had and never will have a facebook. IMO the only time I can see it being useful is if you’re a musician or something to that effect because its free advertisement. Otherwise I see it as a pointless waste of time. I really dont care what the hell you’re doing in your life nor do I want all you random people to know everything about mine.

Well, I totally have zero interest in someone being at the store or telling me they’re tying their shoes. That’s kids’ stuff. But to re-connect with long lost relatives and college friends has been such a blessing. Very little arguing on Facebook, also. No debates or temper tantrums.

If I were the parent of an underage child who had a Facebook account, I would find having one a necessity.

No. The only reason that I gave in is because my 20 something relatives can’t or won’t use the phone or regular e-mail or snail mail to communicate. That’s the only reason I have it. We do a lot of potlucks, showers, kid birthday parties etc. so that’s the only way I can easily find out about those events.

If you have the ability to communicate effectively in othe ways with the people that you really want to hear from, then don’t bother with it, because it really sucks! I hate Facebook. You really have to guard your privacy on FB and people that you barely know will start coming out of the woodwork to friend you, and then it makes you feel kind of guilty to say no to them. People shouldn’t be put into that position, it’s just weird.

No.

Why would you think it would be “necessary”?

Some websites seem to deem it necessary to own a FB account in order to join them. StumbleUpon for example.
I don’t think it’s necessary beyond technical reasons though.

If you can get some value out of it, then it’s worth it. I use mine mostly for getting news articles and networking. Still not a necessity, though.

I have found it interesting to find out what people I knew in the past have ended up doing with their lives. Who is a real estate agent, who is still doing nothing, etc. When you might sometimes remember someone and think “I wonder what they are doing now?” Facebook can help you with that.

Nope. Facebook is dreadfully overrated until you’re out of high school and have people to catch up with.

@Symbeline I dont think thats the case with StumbleUpon, unless thats something new they recently started beings as I have a stumble account but no fb

Well it wouldn’t let me get an account unless I gave my FB one. No problem there, but it would have sucked if I didn’t have a FB. I joined pretty recently though.

@Symbeline I do find that whole thing pretty annoying. There have been several sites that I would have liked to have been a part of but arent because they require fb or twitter to join. stupid >_<

Aye aye captain. Bloody annoying. Facebook is like the Roman Empire fulla zombies.