Facebook Regret

Most people I know have Facebook accounts, including the kids who are too old to legally have them. It doesn't particularly bother me that kids are lying (and breaking the law) to create Facebook accounts before they turn thirteen - but I think in the future, it will bother them. I've made the mistake of scrolling through my friends' old Facebook content, and most of it is extremely cringe-inducing. And unless you're willing to delete your account, that old content is going to be around forever, eternally reminding you of how dumb you were when you were fourteen. The thought of having posts extending back to when I was twelve, or even younger, is absolutely horrifying to me, and I think there will be plenty of people who will have to remake their accounts at some point to purge themselves of their past selves.

The idea of fake Facebook accounts is actually more troubling to me. Not from any philosophical standpoint, or anything like that. I don't care if someone wants to make a profile for their dog. I don't think Facebook is being tainted as a social network because of Batman having his own page, or at least not any more tainted and stupid than it already is. What bothers me about these accounts is that if I'm sent a request from my friend's dog, I'm expected to accept it, and I don't want to see a useless account on my feed. So I suppose they do annoy me, but not by nature of existence, more because of the social norms that have been built around them - if I don't accept your dog's friend request, I am somehow slighting you.

All in all, I think Facebook is fine as it is.  But I think Facebook might be improved if it returned to the state it was in at its inception: only adults allowed. Of course, originally Facebook only allowed college students, which made it easy to keep unwanted users out (by requiring a .edu email address), but Facebook makes far too much money to consider shrinking itself that much. As it is, I can't imagine them even excluding minors, especially as the company is going public. But in the end, people who annoy their friends by creating fake accounts are pretty easily ignored, and people who create accounts at the age of ten are only really hurting themselves.