Editorial: Facebook great for us nosy types

I'm not one of those Facebookers who insists on telling the world every little thing I do in my life.

I'm pretty sure I've updated my status only a few times. I figure a status should only be updated when something momentous has happened.

I just like to check in on what my friends and whanau are up to and add the odd one-liner comments to their status updates and occasionally message them privately.

You could say I'm a fair-weather Facebooker. I go through phases. I'm either on it about once a week or several times a day, scroll up and down, see what others are saying, discussing and doing, "like" a few things and then check out again.

But I do have a few Facebook friends who appear to live on the social networking site. Right now a couple of friends are counting down to a trip to Australia (clearly trying to make us all jealous), one who lives in the US is scared about something but hasn't said what, one in Aussie has a hangover and another has posted a picture of "an austere budgie" in honour of the Government's "austere budget".

Some university brains have devised the first psychological scale to test addiction to Facebook. Yes, some of us, it seems, are addicted to social networking, to sharing every moment of our lives with all and sundry, to commenting on every moment of other people's lives, to sharing links to all manner of other websites and (Chrissie and Jacqui) posting old pictures of friends and colleagues at long-past social gatherings so that people can comment on how young they once looked and how funny their hairdos were back in the ... well, some years back.

Facebook can, of course, also help you feel special. You get more birthday greetings when you're on Facebook because everyone gets reminded when it's your special day.

I've managed to track down a few overseas relatives on Facebook and stay connected with friends who live overseas and that's kind of nice.

But mostly, let's be honest, Facebook is just another way of being nosy and we all know that women are nosier than men which is why women are more likely to become addicted to it.

We can delve into other people's lives, into their thoughts and feelings and generally escape the drab of our own lives by imagining those of others.

The shares debacle aside, God bless Mark Zuckerberg and his mates - they've changed our world.