You spend a LOT of time on Facebook

Posted by anthonykuo , Jul, 2009 @ 11:21 am

Nielson Online reports that in the month of June, 87 million Americans visited Facebook. Fair enough, no big surprises there. But here’s a number to put on the addiction: four hours and thirty nine minutes. That’s the average time spent on Facebook per user.

I basically live on the internet. I keep a number of blogs, including this one, and I spend plenty of time wandering around, sometimes trolling around, other times focused on collecting information. But I’m not a big Facebook user. In fact, unless you’re already my friend, you can’t find me on it.

So I can’t really imagine spending four and a half hours on Facebook. In a month, I probably spend less than five minutes on the site. People always tell me that it’s great for getting in touch with people, seeing what their up to, etc. It’s a social network, after all. But what ever happened to, you know, picking up the phone to call someone to see how they’re doing? Actually seeing and interacting with the person in real life, and not via some creepy stalker friend feed?

Facebook is a valuable tool, I don’t doubt that. But I think its overuse is going to make our interpersonal relationships a lot less personal, and ultimately, a lot less important. And that’s a very sad thing to have happen.

Tags: facebook, internet, myspace, social network, time