Interesting comments from a NY public high school student about why he quit Facebook:

I joined Facebook four years ago. and at first it was amazing. You'd friend someone, and you'd be linked to all their friends. In fact, the standard that classified a kid as your friend was quickly dropped. That girl your friend told you about was now your "friend"; that friend of your sibling was now your "friend." You now shared everything with anyone whose name or face looked vaguely familiar.

This quickly wore me down. Being constantly informed that you make up just a small portion of another person's life erodes the feeling that you are at all meaningful to them.

Adolescence, to begin with, is a time of awful social anxiety. Now a website exists that exacerbates your most irrational social fears to the point of paranoia. Instead of just a private hormonal case of nerves, this is a massive, corporate crowd-sourced paranoia that a huge economic sector is encouraging us to take part in.

On Facebook, I saw how I was taking time away from being with my real friends to feel bad about all the other people who were hardly even part of my life.

…I'm not the only one who is deactivating my Facebook account. I've had other friends tell me that they're sick and tired of going on Facebook everyday hoping to connect, but ending up feeling only more disconnected. Lost in the hype of the company's stock-market debut this year is that while Facebook is ubiquitous, it may also be a fad.

--------------------