Is Facebook a good way to find friends?

Hello! While the internet is great to find people to talk to (be it through forums, video games, etc...) it often happens that they are usually a couple thousand miles away from where I am. An acquaintance of mine said earlier that I should jump on the Facebook bandwagon like the rest of the universe seems to do and try to find people there. But before I sell my soul register on Facebook, I'm going to ask on several forums of several websites whether you think Facebook is worth joining or not. What are the advantages, what are the disadvantages? Is sticking to forums a better way to find people you like? Is the old tried-and-true "go out"-response still a good way to find people (because clubbing is not my thing)? Please post your responses, I'd love to read them!

Find? No. Facebook is good for keeping up with friends you already have, but not for making new ones.

I wouldn't know. I actively dislike Facebook. It tries to eliminate the desire to occupy the same room as your friends to keep in touch. I'm a working adult and I still have friends over to socialize. I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but I'm the type of person that doesn't like it when people say they don't have the time for that anymore. That's just crazy/lazy talk that is being reinforced by stuff like Facebook.

Yeah, it's kinda useful in finding people you used to know but have lost contact with, but making new friends? Absolutely not.

You get out of it what you put in.

Facebook is not a useful tool for finding new friends. If it's available in your region meetup.com is really good for finding groups with similar interests, you can meet friends you have something in common with.

Seems a lot of people get online friends with different groups and such. I mostly have friends I see regularly, anyway, with no interest in meeting people online.

But maybe if you join some local stuff, you may meet people here and there. But the skills to meet people online seem to be the same as off (start conversations, mingle in places/threads you enjoy, etc.)

facebook really limits the amount of interaction you can have with someone prior to being 'friended' by them- so it really isn't conducive to meeting people.

Go out, not to clubs to places that do things you're interested in. In my city there are bars that have every board game imaginable, gamer spaces where people gather to play CCGs, comic book stores, libraries, book stores, meditation centres, yoga centres, a waterfront with tonnes of cool shops, music venues. There are events and festivals that cover hiking, camping, beer and wine, foods from every ethnicity imaginable, jazz, rock, electro, folk, hip hop etc. Go on meetup.com and join grops that actively go out and do things you're interested in.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to go out and meet people in person. There is so much more to socialising that staring at a screen just cannot reproduce. If you are shy then you have to work up the courage to talk to people. Going to events and places that interest you gives you the common ground to strike up conversations, don't be afraid to say hello, people are out there in order to meet others, they want to talk to you so just say hi along with a question about whatever's on your mind at the time, the conversation will naturally go on as long as you're both talking TO each other instead of AT each other.

Facebook is best used to stay in touch with people you like, you don't use it to find friends, you use it to maintain friendships.

@zevvion: I used to think like you but I've found that since starting up my activity on facebook again, I'm actually seeing friends in person more than usual. The messenger is great and most of my close friends are always on it. It's super easy to start conversations with multiple people and organise hang outs. Plus sharing links on the internet with friends is super easy which allows for conversation pieces when you do get together.

Yeah, no...

I wouldn't bother trying to meet people through facebook. It used to work years ago when it was the hot new thing because everyone at my high school and surrounding high schools used it and added anybody even if they didn't know them. You'd wind up chatting with some of them and maybe getting to be friends or setting up a date or something. It's different now though. At least for my age group. Unless you're a young teen (if facebook is even the thing for them anymore?) you probably won't have that experience with it. Nowadays I and most anyone I talk to daily tend to lean towards it seeming really odd when someone we don't know requests a friend invite out of nowhere. Whenever I see someone I don't recognize try to add me I immediately go into skeptical mode and see what I can figure out about them from the profile. If they have something in common, like the same school or college or whatever then yeah I'll probably add them. If they're just some random person who doesn't have something significant in common with me to explain why they want to add me then they get the decline immediately. Maybe my social circle and I are just cynical after having been on the site for so long though. Who knows.

I'd recommend going out to meet people in real life, and then adding them on facebook later if you have a pleasant time hanging out. Don't do it in the reverse order. It's a decent way to reestablish or continue a friendship. Not a good way to create one.

@zevvion: On the other side, social media meant that some finally had a way to keep in touch without having to see people in their physical form.
I gain nothing from seeing people face to face, so when I say I don't have time, it's not that I'm crazy/lazy, it's because there is so much stuff I would rather do than waste time traveling to someone and then sitting there for a while and then wasting even more time traveling back home.. That was a whole evening down the drain imo.

It's not facebook that's the problem. It's the world's inability to accept that lots of people just aren't that social. They have other stuff they would rather do. Now that we don't have to be social in the real world, we choose not to be. It is woooooonderful.

Everyone wins if you think about it.

Like others said, it's good for keeping in contact with people you already know. I don't use it that way so much, as I honestly use it like an all encompassing interest site, where I can look at news for games, film, science or what have you, and I can also contact whoever talks on their pages about a game too if I want, which I assume is either a developer or publisher. This is also why I'd use Twitter, but I don't like Twitter as much since you can't write anything; unfortunately, that seems to be slightly more popular, though I could be wrong. Anyways, no, don't use it to meet new people, unless you have the full intention on meeting them I suppose. Skimming through on here, people know what they're talking about. I've only added a few pictures of myself on there, which are pretty old, and I don't friend people unless they're family, or really close friends, because like I said, I don't really use it for that.

It's nice for keeping in touch with friends and family that you haven't seen in years and years and would otherwise have difficulty getting a hold of. Also I could theoretically see myself befriending people in the video games group I'm in based in my city.

That said, if you don't already count on finding old friends on facebook, then no, it's probably not going to help you find new ones.

It's great for irl friends, but even that is a double edged sword. You'll find people you barely knew from school or former jobs all wanting to 'friend' you just to snoop in on your business. I wouldn't recommend it for trying to meet new people ether. Good luck dude!

Its fine for finding computer friends, people that you never meet in real life. If you are looking for actual human companionship you will be required to go outside, dress in a way to attract people from a social class you are looking to interact with, and not be awkward with your vocal and bodily communications.

Reaching out to old friends is the only thing I've used Facebook for. Never really met anyone. Maybe I suck as Facebook.

facebook is to keep up with people you know.

asking people if you should join faceobook is the very definition of overthinking it. sign up if you want to try it. don't like it, don't use it again. simple.

Your life doesn't drastically change once you create a facebook login.

I've never made friends on Facebook, but it has helped in developing friendships with people I've met elsewhere.

Depends. I'm part of a facebook group that started out as a Jim Sterling group and everyone's super cool. Much like this place here.

That said, Facebook is not OKcupid and what others have said, it's mainly to keep in touch with current folks and keep track of events etc. I would also like to add that "making new friends" is a bit weird, start with meeting new people and go from there.

We do very different things with the people we care about.

The difference might be why we think differently too. And that's fine, I was just saying how it was for me.

If there was someone you knew in high school, college or a summer camp and have fallen out of contact with them then it's a great way to reconnect with them.

For finding brand new friends, it's pretty weak. It can be good for finding groups of people who you might meet up with though. I've joined a few board game groups in my local area and have gone to play games with those people.

I don't even know if it's good at that anymore. I deleted my Facebook a while ago because it felt like a news feed full of information I didn't care about. The constant memes and stuff that would show up on a daily basis would make me start to actively dislike the people I knew.

I have to disagree. There are groups where people make pen-pal type friends and it's pretty popular in Asia. If you are willing to check something like that you may find new buddies. I have no experience with that type of stuff but my friend found many people that way before going to Korea. It looks like it works.

All I use Facebook for is its instant messaging, event management, and reading articles shared by a specific friend of mine. It's not something I use to find new people, so much as keep in touch with a friend I already have, be they old or new. I use Twitter for new people mostly, but that's less "finding new friends," and more "making interesting acquaintances who I speak to from time to time". Sometimes that will lead to becoming closer to that person, maybe meeting them in real life and adding them on Facebook etc.

Pusheen is the ONLY reason to stay on Facebook!

I deleted my facebook over a year ago, but I seem to remember spending most of my time there avoiding people I didn't want to see and trying to limit how much of my information they could find. So maybe I'm not the right person to ask.

@doctorobviously: Try Meetup.com. Just put in your area and hobbies and it will show you a list of activities going on in your area created by other members of the site with similar interests.

@ajamafalous said:

Got it in the very first response.

Facebook is basically so you never have to go to a high school reunion, or keeping up with friends who live in other countries / states. Not so much finding new people. For that, I'd recommend online coop games for online buddies, and activity groups for local friends. It's pretty easy to find D&D groups in the States, if you're into that sort of thing. Hiking, too.

@doctorobviously: What is it you're looking to find people for? Chances are there's a better resource than facebook.

Word!!

Facebook is a real mess for finding individuals you might want to meet. You *might* have some luck looking for (probably local) groups that are of interest to you, but something like meetup.com is likely better for that.

You might also look to the Duder Geolocation Project - who knows, there might be other GB duders right near you!

Pretty much the same here. I still use Facebook for private messaging with my core group of friends, but the newsfeed has become all but worthless.

@ajamafalous: I actually moved countries 2-3 years ago and Facebook did literally nothing to help me keep in touch with friends. Quite the opposite - I became this weird spectator in lives I was familiar with but was no longer part of. So FB became this awkward reminder of my friends posting friends of hanging out, going to parties, going on trips together, and I was just kind of there watching it happen and it wasn't very fun.

I send e-mails to a friend once in a while and find out stuff about whats happening but thats the curse of being the person that moved away: your life changes dramatically and you want to reach out to your old ties, but for them barely anything has changed at all.

Facebook is good for keeping up with your existing network of friends. Its not designed for, say, searching for Star Wars fans in your area and adding them to go out to lunch. Its also great for managing group events or sports teams/bands/etc.

@jesus_phish: I'd love to find people who share my interests, and my interests are not so different from a lot of "nerdy" people. There's a ton of things that interest me, but I don't have a single real friend to share them with. For example, tomorrow I'm going to see the new Mad Max movie, and I just know that the theatre is going to be packed with tons of people seperated in large groups of friends, of which 99% of them has a girlfriend, and 100% of them all have friends around them. I don't have that luxury, and I don't know why. A lot of people like to criticize people without friends as lazy people who don't put in the effort to find them. But I put in the effort and come up emptyhanded while others get everything they want just naturally, be it regular friends or girlfriends.

A lot of people on the thread bring up Meetup.com, but that website is worthless if you live in any other country other than the USA. I may look around all I please but all I end up with are acquaintances who are very pleasant people but eventually it doesn't lead to anything at all. It's not hard to see why, either: every single person ever has their own "main" friends. It's frustrating. I love being alone, too, I love the freedom it gives you, but I've never experienced that kind of luxury yet. It's not like I want 50 friends or something, but one or two people would be awesome. Perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way, perhaps a ton of people are friendless and maybe I'm the only one who's bothered by it.

Facebook is a place to keep a list of family members you never talk to, and people you used to be friends with.

I’ve met some pretty good friends that I’ve met offline on Twitter and Instagram.