So did I. But things have changed, and some of those people with whom I remained in contact now use FB to the near exclusion of everything else.

These people are family in their 90s, for whom well-meaning children and grand-children have set up on FB. They don't use email, they can't write letters because of arthritis (and time delays ... international post can be very slow), and effectively the only async comms they use at all is FB.

I'd ask that you not try to tell me what I really mean.

I had the same situation with far away old people (grandmas in Venezuela, on in France, me living in Africa or Asia), some had problem with sight, earing, etc.

They didn't have internet.

We managed to get in touch.

> I'd ask that you not try to tell me what I really mean.

Manner of speaking.

The important is again that it is a matter of cost vs convenience.

I understand the cost can get pretty high.

Yet still, people kept in touch for decades with old distant relatives before the internet.

Using facebook is convenience, that's the point. It is very convenient.

It's the whole argument of this thread: the convenience eventually makes most people discard the cost of not using FB as too high, and the privacy things as not important enough compared to that.

They're 90? I wonder if it couldn't be replaced by a weekly phone call.

For reference, I'm 60, nearly 61, my mother is 90, nearly 91, and we are a long-lived family. I phone my mother three times a week.

For the rest, see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180

Yeah, for your mother definitely makes sense to already have more than one weekly phone call, but I was thinking about other family members.

Reading your post, it seems Facebook is a bit of a recreational activity to keep them sharp and social, which is good. What I was thinking is whether you need to participate in it, since the people this age I know is more than willing to keeping me up to date on all interesting stuff by talking. But of course each family is different so I'll just assume you know what you're doing!

In my experience, almost everybody over 60 really prefers to talk on the phone anyways

I'm over 60 and I hate talking to people on the phone. My mother likes it, and that's why I call her three times a week. But most of my aunts and uncles prefer to show their photos on FB and talk about what they're doing there. I call them for birthdays and special anniversaries, and having kept up-to-speed via FB means I can talk about things that really matter, or get clarification on things that weren't obvious.

But they like using FB, and it's the only effective way I know to stay in touch and remain a part of their lives.

> What you realy mean is that you value more the convenience it offers that the price to pay for using it.

People should be more charitable.

They said that they must stay in touch with these people and that these people can’t seem to use other things. Often times you have to stay in contact with family members because they aren’t able to properly care for themselves. Those same people may not have the ability to easily change how they interact with the digital world due to mental health issues and you have no choice but to meet them where they are.

I think this is largely a straw man, or taking an extreme case as representative.

I have friends that are not on Facebook. It requires more effort to stay in touch with them (for example, calling them on the phone) but it's doable. I don't see how a thing that was invented 10 years ago is now the sole method of communication with loved ones.

That said, I agree it's not without cost to delete Facebook.

Again, this is implying that the cost of another solution to all those problems is very high, and facebook is a very cheap, convenient solution.

So privacy is not important enough to justify those costs.