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  • The Atlantic

    Letters: When and Why Did You Join—or Quit—Facebook?

    This week marks the social network’s 15th anniversary. We asked readers to share their Facebook origin stories—and whether their interactions with the platform have changed over time.
    Feb 08, 2019 6 minutes
    Source: Mandel Ngan / Getty

    We Asked Readers:

    How old were you when you first joined Facebook, and do you remember why you joined? Has the way you use it changed over the years? What might cause you to leave the platform for good?

    Here’s how readers responded.

    I first joined Facebook in June of 2007, the summer before my junior year of high school. I joined because I had heard my friends talking about Facebook for a couple of months, and posting pictures and having conversations, and I wanted to have access to that information, too—a symptom of what we would now call fear of missing out (FOMO). So after returning from a mission trip that summer with a full disposable camera, I had the pictures developed and requested a CD with digital copies in addition to the prints. With digital photos in hand, I created a Facebook account and began posting. At this point in time, in order to join, you still had to be , whether it was a college or high school.

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