I am 29, and I use Facebook. I defy you, the previous poster, to categorize me as an emo lemming kiddie who survives on external validation. I am, in fact, a busy guy with few practical ways of keeping in touch with friends and family, many of whom are at a distance.
Everyone on my friend list is a real person who I am actually friends with. Not "I met you at the party last night", but actual friends. Many are people I interact with here and now, as I live in Ottawa, Canada, but I also have many friends who currently live in places like Australia, Singapore, Germany, California, Edmonton, Virginia, Toronto. It is nice to be able to communicate with them, share photos, and keep up to date.
Yes, I could do all that by e-mail, but the reality is I'm not going to take the trouble to sit down and send e-mails out to all of these people every time any little thing happens that they might be interested in. Far better for me to create some kind of blog or photo-sharing site, post to it every time I think I have something to share, and then tell all my friends that if they're interested, they can come visit my site and keep up to date... oh, wait.. that's exactly what Facebook is.
And what to do if I lose the e-mail address of one of my friends? How do I search for it? How do I contact them? They've moved in the past few years and I don't know their new phone number or mailing address, either. If only there was a directory... oh, wait, that's what Facebook is.
I post my full mailing address and phone number on my Facebook profile. Recently I got a wedding invitation from an old friend I haven't seen in a while. He got my address from my profile. Otherwise, I'm not sure if he would have been able to track me down. And no, you can't see it if you're not on my friend list. And I won't add you as a friend unless I know you personally.
I occasionally run into people who I have not seen in years. Old friends from university, high school, even elementary school. I think it's really great that I have the ability to stay in touch with them. If only I could look up my old yearbooks, from Bell High School class of 1996, and see what everyone's up to these days... oh, wait, that's what Facebook is.
I'm not old enough to be the parent of a teen or college age child, but I know people who are, and they use Facebook to keep in touch with their kids. As a bonus, it gives them a way to keep tabs on what their kids are "really" doing online, and in a way that's inclusionary and non-intrusive. They are part of the experience, not snooping in on something they're not invited to.
The OP's beef with Facebook (and MySpace etc) is that it's chock full of little kids. This is true. But didn't it start as a college site? Which is more of the problem, that there are adults on Facebook with ill intentions toward a friends list full of kids -- or that said kids are freely making accounts and posting personal details on their profiles, exposing themselves to the world, and accepting friend requests from random adults?
That said, I DO have an issue with constantly receiving vampire bites, "hot or not" invitations, bombs, and other silliness. I click "Ignore".
