There was a time when Facebook seemed anything but boring, the social media site looked to be the best thing since sliced bread.

Facebook was transforming the way we interact with the people and world around us.

There have always been sections of society with a low opinion of the social network site but it now appears even the more devoted facebookers are becoming disillusioned. So is Facebook now boring and out of fashion?

For most users, when they first create a Facebook profile they get drawn in by the novelty factor. Being able to see what people you haven’t met for years now look like and what they are doing with their lives feeds our natural curiosity and need for gossip.

You also look forward to logging on to see if you’ve received any new friend requests or if anyone has posted some really interesting or exciting news.

After a few weeks though the friend requests begin to slow down and you start to realize that the vast majority of status updates and posts are rather tedious and of little to no interest to you.

However despite many people knowing this deep down they still regularly go on Facebook in the hope there’ll be something worth seeing.

Now we’re not saying Facebook is all bad, far from it, it can be a useful tool for communication especially if you wish to be heard by many people at once. The problem is the site has kinda been built up to be something far greater than it actually is, there aren’t too many users in the world who wouldn’t admit to some feelings of boredom or wasting their time while facebooking.

For all the ease of communication and ability to nose about to your hearts content Facebook has a lot of negative sides to it, many of which have now simply become accepted as a natural part of life by the generation which barely knew a life without it.

In the days before FB there was a cycle to how friendships and society flowed. Whether you consider it good or bad, as people move through life most relationships come and go. When you leave school or change jobs you inevitably lose contact with the ones you knew just a little and only stay in contact with the people you knew well.

Now in the time of the online social network you can be expected to be friends with virtually every person you’ve ever known, even if you never even liked them.

What started off as a handy way of chatting and sharing stuff with your closest friends and family quickly turned into a popularity contest with social pressure on users to acquire as many FB friends as possible. The result of this is many users now have hundreds and even thousands of FB friends, most of whom they’ve barely spoken with in years and wouldn’t particularly want to.

There’s usually a good reason why we lose contact with certain people and do nothing to stop it. Another effect of this is these friend magnets now have their news feeds filled with status updates and photos from people they have no interest in putting them off actually using the site the way it was intended.

Another side effect of Facebook is users become aware of everything everyone else is doing simply by logging on a few times a day. This can mean when they eventually meet with each other in person they have less to talk about because the conversation has effectively already taken place online.

Men and women who become friends online before they go on a first date will also have a far from traditional experience as they’ll have each become experts on the other before a single word is spoken face to face. Surely this is a far less fun and natural way to get to know someone which is often the most fun part of a relationship.

Then of course if you do find yourself in a full on relationship with someone your Facebook friends with you better hope neither of you are the jealous type and good luck keeping anything to yourself.

An increasing amount of Facebook users appear to use the site more out of habit than enjoyment and if your not careful spending too much time following other peoples lives can lead to your own life passing you by. For many these day’s FB is old school and Twitter is now the place to be, at least there you can actually hear from people doing exciting stuff.

The recent London 2012 Olympic’s were dubbed the social media games due to the huge amount the athletes, media and fans used social networking to share news and opinions of the game. Despite this I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I heard the F word mentioned, for London 2012 it was all about Twitter.

Twitter gives athletes and any other famous people a direct way to chat with their fans without anything being filtered or manipulated by the traditional media. In turn users get to choose exactly who they want to follow giving them a new insight into their hero’s lives.

Think about it, would you rather hear about what someone just eat for breakfast or how someone just won a gold medal? Facebook can still be a great tool as long as you use it in a way you really want.

So if competing for popularity and perceived success with people you hardly even know has left a bitter taste in your mouth don’t worry, your not alone.