I have become increasingly bored with Facebook recently.

I say recently, it’s actually been a while since I began to question what exactly the website brings to my life, and whether it would be wiser to try and give it up like the bad habit it has become.

Checking Facebook has been part of my daily routine for some time now, and I consider it a valuable source of news both national and personal. I like to catch up with my friends, see what exciting adventures they have been on, or whatever they choose to share with myself and others about their life, be it an accomplishment, a song they like, or a moment of profound thought or wit that (heaven forbid) might be original.

On the flip side, my daily browse has begun to feel more and more like eating a big bag of pistachio nuts. I realise this is a rather crude or unusual analogy, but my search for useful and interesting information on Facebook does have a similar feel to trying to find the last few nuts in a sea of empty, useless shells.

As an incredibly well designed and multifunctional platform, Facebook has the power of being whatever you want it to be, and as a result it has become an enormous paradox, never-ceasing in its production, consumption, and distribution of information

It is a place of inspiration, consolation, interest and boredom. It combines the mundane with the fantastic, the sad with the heart-warming. I could go on for much longer, but sufficient to say that the complexities of life are all present inside that little blue frame on your computer, whether you notice them or not.

As a result of all this, I find myself reading through seventeen posts relating to Jersey Shore before I come to one from a friend doing something fun like performing in a play or running a marathon, which leaves me feeling simultaneously pissed off and glad that I logged on.

Perhaps this is a life lesson, teaching me to take the good with the bad, and to appreciate the difference between the real people and the vapid narcissists. I’m still not sure though…

My concerns with Facebook run deeper than just this, considering the safety of the Internet and its potential to be abused by those who attempt to regulate it. This, however, could be a whole blog by itself so I will not digress at this point in time.  What I will say though, is that social media has an incredible power that has not yet been recognised by most people that use it, and that its potential for good equals its that of its potential for evil.

Life is still life, whether it is virtual or not, so it would seem that by leaving Facebook I would be walking away from communicating with most of my generation, and that is something quite hard to justify.