Facebook friends!

I've just come home from nearly 3 months away and FB was lovely for feeling I was in touch with family and friends.

I think it's a good way of keeping in contact with people you want to be in contact with.

But I have some old friends who don't do FB for one reason and another, they tend to not use email either and although I wouldn't cross them off my Christmas card list, I don't feel so in touch with them as I do with my friends who are on FB.

Facebook messaging is great too.

I use FB too. Just friend those you want. Be sure about your settings and ignore anything you don't want. It's people who cause the problems not the site itself.

I find Facebook useful but do not feel compelled to accept people as friends if I am not interested. I have one or two very young friends but don't follow them so that I do not need to see their party pictures every time I turn on the computer. I keep in touch with all family and friends in other parts of the world. This month I am going to meet two Facebook friends when they travel from their homes in America.

I am with Merlot. With friends and family all over the world, it's a greatr way to keep in touch. I've actually 'met' relatives from the other side of the world via FB, and we all intend to meet up- which is really interesting as there was a huge rift in the previous generation.

I find Facebook useful however I do use the hide facility fairly often. It is also possible to customise who sees what.

If you don't see this person in real life it would be easy to ignore the request. If not then edit your settings so that you can decide what she sees and 'hide' her posts.

I use FB every day, just as much as GN. You just need to set your security/privacy settings to just include know friends.

I've just used fb messaging to complain about a missing parcel for my dgd, and had an immediate reply and replacement sorted.

I agree with merlot. I choose not to use Facebook as it gave me problems, so I came off it. Simples.

I was replying to merlot

Mine too. It's quite useful actually cos you can communicate with a lot of family members together wherever they are in the world.

Whether someone is a friend or not is horribly complicated by Facebook. If we weren't in contact through FB, I'd probably very occasionally meet her in the street or similar (we used to have occasional coffees but that seems to have stopped) and I'd sigh to myself while she went on about her life, try to be sympathetic and then go on my way wishing her well but basically not wanting to bump into her too soon again. Facebook seems to turn such people into next door neighbours, even if you mute them, they're always kind of there. I did do a cull of 'Friends' and I have the newsfeed of just my daughters, husband and few people I really do think of as friends (I've 'only' got 60 or so anyway!). Thorn in the flesh stuff, Gransnet is a lot more interesting!

My family use facebook to communicate as well, annie. It's no big deal is it?

Yep, accepting the friend request but not following her would solve the problem.

Or you could just not accept the request if you don't regard her as a friend.

Thanks for the replies, I feel supported in my desire to not get back into contact with the woman I mentioned. In response to merlotgran I wonder if anyone else has children who use FB to the exclusion of all else? They just don't seem to recognise email, they use Facebook messenger all the time and I don't want to miss communication with them by trying to insist they do something else. They'll phone if there's an emergency but otherwise there's all sorts of little chat things that happen no other way than FB.

You can mute people. So accept her request but mute or unfollow her then you won't see her timeline unless you specifically want to go and look at it. I'll just go and check how it's done.

I agree with all the above - just ignore any requests you don't fancy.

I have quietly "unfriended" a few people from my past life and ignored friend requests from people I did not wish to have access to me. No guilt, no hang ups, it is entirely up to you. But if it makes you really unhappy you may wish to just give it all a rest for a bit. It can cause a lot of trouble when people feel slighted/left out/insulted/ganged up on- it can be a dangerious medium and should be used with discretion (and often with a pinch of salt)

I'm fed up with people moaning about facebook. Nobody forces you to go on it. Nobody forces you to 'befriend' people you don't like.

Grow another skin.

I've only got fifteen friends on mine and one of those is a border collie!

I use fb, BUT I only have a few close friends on my page and my privacy settings keep out any undesirables.
You have to remember that you are in charge of your page, and you don't have to see, or do, anything you don't want to.
Used carefully, it is very rewarding.