I liken using Facebook to being a scab or crossing a picket line.there is a BOYCOTT.

[Ms. Toad]

83. Actually, we weren't. Which is why I use facebook.

I am in contact with relatives, high school classmates, members of peer groups (especially those who share the same rare disease) in a way that I was not before facebook - because (1) I simply don't have the time to individually connect with each of them and (2) because of the connections between classmates, family, peer group,etc. I have been able to find them.

I had lost touch with virtually all of my high school classmates - and I am now in regular and significant contact with about a dozen. Same with college classmates. Same with relatives at the cousin level of consanguinity or more distant, the vast majority of whom live in different states, and a few high school and college instructors.

My daughter's rare disease impacts approximately 30,000 people in the US. Facebook is the means the rare diseas support group uses to connect those individual both to each other and to drug (and other) trials that are typically impossible to carry out because the population to draw on for particiption is so small. Facebook makes that possible.

I also have friends on facebook who host regular conversations about race, COVID 19, class, etc. with a diverse group of participants. We need more of that in this world, not less - and it is not happening in siloed places like DU or, for most of us, in real life since we tend to gather with like-minded peers.

You may choose to limit your relationships to people you have time to engage with in more a time-consuming fashion. I choose to use the tools that are available to make those contacts easier, and my life richer. There is no value judgment associated with either choice. Facebook is a tool. I use it - and I'm tired of people who have appointed themselves arbiter of all that is good and righ in the world insist on attempting to shame anyone who recognizes the value of this particular tool and who uses it.