I was never much into MySpace, but Facebook I’m obsessed with, and I think the bug is biting more and more people worldwide every day. 

A member since January 2005, I joined with my University of New England email (when Facebook first started colleges and universities had to be registered with the Web site and you needed a “.edu” address to join). Now the site is open to all who are interested, and while I started off slow, with a profile picture and only a few friends, it’s become a networking resource. 

Now my friend list has reached 390, and I can’t tell you how many times someone’s name comes up on the “news feed” and I can’t remember who they are or why they’re my “Facebook friend.”

Then there’s the fancy “People You May Know” tool that suggests people based on where we went to school, the current city we live in and for some random reason this tool suggests my coworker’s relatives on a regular basis. For the most part, I don’t know the people suggested by “People You May Know.”

As weird as this Web site seems to me sometimes — checking people’s status updates, being able to look through a stranger’s photo album or finding a person you just met — I’m addicted to it. 

I update my status daily — the proclamation Tuesday was, “Emma is thinking it’s fiery sunrises like today that make it worthwhile” thanks to the beautiful skyline on my way into the office — and I check out my friend’s pages (my real friends — not the random 370 others I have) to see what they’re up to.

Now that I have finally broke down and called Time Warner Cable for an Internet connection, it made me wonder how I suffered through six months at my apartment without access to the web.

And I say it’s catching on because my mom recently signed up for Facebook after her best friend joined the site. Cousins who are nearly 10 years older than me set up their pages this fall, and friends who I wouldn’t have ever expected to become “Facebook junkies” have uploaded pictures and change their status half a dozen times a day. 

Sometimes I think if it weren’t for things like instant messaging, text messaging, email and Web sites like Facebook, I probably would not keep in touch with half the people I do because I’m too lazy to actually call. 

The sad part is I was too little before all these conveniences came around that I don’t really remember life without them. Prior to Internet connections and my first cell phone, mom and dad made the playdates and drove me everywhere. Now I can plan a whole evening out without actually speaking to my friends. 

And rarely do I go a day without logging on for a quick check of what’s going on in Facebook world for fear I may miss something important. 

— Emma Bouthillette