It used to be that every business needs a website. Facebook is just a cheap and easy alternative to a website, and it comes with a lot of features like analytics (I think FB Pages have Analytics) and knowing how many people are interested in your services. Sadly it comes with your business website being generic and inside a walled garden run by arbitrary-moral police/government who will also lie to you to make money out of you ("Pay $ for this post to get x impressions!", but how many of those will be from bots?).

Hopefully with technology being simpler, it'll be simpler for the 95% (https://lifehacker.com/this-chart-shows-how-computer-literat...) of people to make websites without walled gardens. But a small business probably thinks an FB page is good enough, why pay for your own design and hosting?

  It's getting harder and harder to "just don't use" social media.

I don't know about the business perspective, but why is it hard not to use facebook for people? It's a serious question. Everybody I know (me included) who is not on facebook has no problem with it, and it certainly isn't getting harder.

> but why is it hard not to use facebook for people? It's a serious question. Everybody I know (me included) who is not on facebook has no problem with it, and it certainly isn't getting harder.

You'll get left out of real life. If your social circle organizes events on Facebook, and you're the only weirdo that can only be contacted by email and phone, you'll be forgotten by all but your strong friends (who don't need Facebook's friend-menu to remember you).

That might not be a problem if your social circle doesn't rely on Facebook much or you're (for instance) an introvert who doesn't care about parties thrown by acquaintances (which are a nice way to meet new people), but there are a lot of people who those don't apply to and who would have to sacrifice to avoid Facebook.

That assumes a lot about what one considers "real life." My social circle has never included "people who only remember me because I'm in a list curated by Facebook". Whether or not these people invite me to parties makes no difference to me. I think as one gets older one finds that "Partying" with distant acquaintances becomes less and less an important part of one's social life.

> That assumes a lot about what one considers "real life." My social circle has never included "people who only remember me because I'm in a list curated by Facebook". Whether or not these people invite me to parties makes no difference to me.

I already covered that in my original comment: it might not be a bad thing for you, but you are not everyone. There exists a significant number of people for whom quitting Facebook would have some real negative costs.

> I think as one gets older one finds that "Partying" with distant acquaintances becomes less and less an important part of one's social life.

Also getting invited to a party was just an example, and not all parties are booze-fueled keggers where you "party."

It's also not "distant acquaintances" I'm taking about. The group I'm talking about are the people 1) who you like enough to want to hang out with, 2) who like you enough to invite you, but 3) don't like you enough to always remember your special communication preferences unprompted.

This happened to me: I quit Facebook some while back, but there is an alumni group I wanted to connect to. But their events are organized on an FB page, which I can't even access. So I had to find someone else who's a member of the group and ask them when they are assembling.

I'm reminded somewhat of certain websites only favoring a specific browser or being written in a manner that seriously messes with accessibility.

> you'll be forgotten by all but your strong friends (who don't need Facebook's friend-menu to remember you).

How is that a bad thing?

It's not normal or healthy to try to maintain hundreds or thousands of "friendships" with people you barely know. You don't need to keep in life-long contact with some guy you spent 4 minutes talking to at a bar while on vacation 5 years ago.

>> you'll be forgotten by all but your strong friends (who don't need Facebook's friend-menu to remember you).

> How is that a bad thing?

I already covered that in my original comment: it might not be a bad thing to you, but you are not everyone. There exists a significant number of people for whom quitting Facebook would have some real negative costs.

> It's not normal or healthy to try to maintain hundreds or thousands of "friendships" with people you barely know. You don't need to keep in life-long contact with some guy you spent 4 minutes talking to at a bar while on vacation 5 years ago.

That's not what I was talking about at all. I was thinking more about the kind of friendly acquaintances that you see regularly. For instance, you might have 3-10 close friends, 20-30 more distant friends, and 500-2000 Facebook non-friends. I'm talking about the second group of 20-30 friends.

> I was thinking more about the kind of friendly acquaintances that you see regularly.

If you see them regularly, why not just exchange phone numbers or e-mail addresses? I just don't understand why Facebook is needed to keep in contact with them.. unless you somehow feel it's necessary to always know what those distant acquaintances are eating for lunch at any given time.

Because by getting off Facebook, you end up missing a lot of what you are used to. If your life and your friend's life is not on it, this won't affect you. But if you and your social network has let Facebook grow as a dependency, you can't easily get out of it. The only way it could work is if you manage to migrate your entire social circle off it and it won't happen.

By getting off Facebook, you simply make yourself hard to reach and it will make your casual relationships rot and die. When my friends create an event, they click "add all members of 'amazing friend group' to event" and that's it.

Nobody is going to then track down the one person who decided to leave the group for a casual event like "5-7 beer this Friday". Even for big events, you may end up being let out simply because you have made yourself harder to reach.

Sure, by leaving Facebook I would still be able to see my 2-3 closest friends and partner but that's it. Nobody in this day and age is going to send an email to me asking to come to a group event. Hell, I don't even know the email addresses of my closest friends, let alone our extended friend group. I can't even imagine how I would organize a 20+ Christmas event without it.

A christmas party for 20 people? Do you not have anyone's phone number? Or address?

People will ask if you are going to the party and people tweet about a party or they will ig a photo about it. If you have no point of contact outside of facebookfriendgroup you are on the edge of losing connection to that group. It will start happening when people start moving over to snapchat one by one, joining new circles you are not part of, having smaller parties you didn't know about. If those casual friends are important you really need to strengthen those bonds outside of facebook. One day there will be a new smaller group.. will you make the cut?

Everyone is on Facebook but only some people are on the other networks. Fragmentation is not much of an issue or danger.[1]

Sure, if I'm not looking at Facebook and a party happens without me I'll receive some snaps about it. However at that point it's already too late. Snapchat is for sharing slices of life. Nobody organize big events via Snapchat.

Twitter and Instagram are for interacting with strangers. I can't see how posting a photo of a private event to my Instagram followers would help the situation. All it will do is end up with people unfollowing me for posting content that is not what they follow me for. It's not somewhere to interact with friends. Twitter is even worst. Am I to do? Look at #party daily in hope to stumble on a real life friend using it? On both those networks, I follow brands and hobbies. Not close friends.

Everyone is on Facebook and leaving it would simply make my social life harder. I've tried it many time and I've also seen it happen. Whenever someone isn't on Facebook, you don't see them. It keeps happening. "Where is Bob? Did we forget to invite Bob tonight? Does anyone of you has his phone number? I can't seem to find him on Messenger." Phone numbers and addresses are on a need to know basis. If I never needed someone's, I don't have it. Since everyone uses Messenger to communicate, I don't have a lot of them.

[1] Perhaps that's a French Canadian thing, over here Facebook has around 70% of the population while Twitter has only around 10%. Even if you go Canada wide, Facebook has 71%, Twitter 27%, Instagram 20% and Snapchat 9%.