you are unlikely to make more than a handful of "true" friends. as long as those are kept, what remains of the tens or hundreds of "friends" in Facebook is no more than a passing aquaintance, and they do not add much, if any, your life by reading their feeds or comments (any more than comments on HN).
I can confidently say based on what I observed that I in all likelihood missed out on forming a number of strong friendships due to not having facebook, as I was able to compare the before and after in very similar environments. I would say it becomes much less crucial after university, but during that period it affects a whole lot.
Light acquaintances are actually a boon when travelling or trying new things. Facebook makes it quite straightforward to tap this resource, and surprisingly people are quite receptive to being called up by semi-distant people.
One thing you miss if you only interact with "true" friends is a diversity of opinion. People online often complain about that crazy uncle who posts birther nonsense, but it is important to keep in mind that those people exist and if you want to know them you have to understand where they are coming from. If you don't, they will blindside you when you meet them or people like them in real life.
It's too easy these days to construct echo chambers to live in and discover only too late that you have drifted out into the fringes without ever realizing it.
This is one of the most surprising things about the Internet IMHO. I had thought for a long time that all of the conversation online would bring people together in shared understanding. Now I realize that it has more effectively allowed people to segregate themselves into like minded groups. In the old days there was only one or two big news stations and maybe a couple of local papers where people got their news and opinions. Sometimes the newsmen would say things that conflicted with your worldview and maybe on a rare occasion make you reconsider. Now you can customize the message to only ever hear what you want.
Social media can fight this a bit, if only because you don't get to choose your family and people notice if you selectively ignore them.
i thought social media is the exact echo chambers you speak - where people post one liners, fake news, and no diversity of opinion. After all, if you don't like someone's feed because their views are so different or so contrary to your own, you'd just stop their posts from appearing!
