While writing about Facebook, Ernie Smith of Tedium repeats what many — most? — people who use it despite knowing better tell themselves:

To be clear, I knew Facebook was a really undesirable thing to have in my life (it’s pissed me off plenty in the past), but it’s a necessary evil, because it captures people in your life that you would lose contact with entirely if you did not have a presence there. But it’s really troublesome to me how much of that stuff is getting flooded out by literally dozens of pieces of unrelated junk.

I haven’t had a Facebook account for 10+ years, yet I have kept (intermittent, once-every-few-years) touch with elementary and high school friends and distant family members. Sure, I don’t know where everyone’s been for their summer vacation, whether my nieces and nephews twice-removed have new pets or which new schools they are going to, and I certainly don’t know whether someone I barely knew at high school has a new job (though there is always LinkedIn for that one). If “losing contact” means not knowing all of that, well, so be it. But keeping track of the ins and outs of people’s lives is not a prerequisite for asking them for help and advice if and when needed, nor helping out when asked.

So what, exactly, is the tradeoff here?