You might lose all online communication options with at least some of your friends. This is unacceptable to many/most people, hence why they join Facebook and end up perpetuating the effect.

So, if Facebook shut down tomorrow, we'd lose all online communication options?

Now you're just being argumentative. This kind of thing belongs on reddit, not here.

Just responding to a ridiculous level of exaggeration. You guys appear to be seriously arguing that there was no easy way to keep in touch with friends and family before 2004.

It's really not just about you, and what you care about. Other people may care about stuff you may or may not care about, and what they care about is valid to them.

To others, some things that may matter to them may include:

- Trackng down old friends

- Keeping in touch with friends

- Keeping in touch with acquaintances

- Staying aware of what friends and acquaintances are up to

- Keeping friends and acquaintances aware of what they are up to

- Fitting into social groups

- Staying aware of what their social groups of interest are up to

- Or more generally staying aware of cultural events, news, trends, and topics that are of interest amongst circles of people they are close to, or other circles of which they are members.

Facebook is a one-stop shop for a lot of these things. Sure, some or all of them are conceivably possible in other ways, but finding alternatives for all of them would involve significant expenditure of effort compared to just being a regular user of Facebook.

So before about 10 years ago when Facebook was launched, these things were only "conceivably possible", maybe with significant effort expenditure? Really???

Yep. It really was a different world before Facebook. Just one real and important example: I had lost track of many of my old friends and acquaintances, and am now in touch with them.