Apparently there are still people who haven’t joined Facebook or Twitter or MySpace, and they’re not all necessarily century-old technophobes like my parents. The Washington Post published an article about social networking refuseniks, people in their 20s and early 30s who just refuse (refusenik = refuse + beatnik, get it?!) to join any of these digital communication websites. They truly are in the minority as a study showed about 85 percent of all Internet users between the ages of 18 and 34 visited Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in August.

Of course, these refuseniks cite reasons like “Oh, I like my privacy” or “I can focus on things I really care about,” but let’s face it, these kids miss out on a lot. To name a few, you can’t see embarrassing pictures from the pub crawl last weekend, you don’t get to know exactly which one of your friends is in the bathroom/work/bar at any given time and, most importantly, you don’t get invites to all the cool, ragin’ parties (and then you miss out on seeing the pictures of the parties you weren’t invited to…it’s a vicious cycle, really).

But maybe these kids do have the right idea. Perhaps, in the semi-words of one Janis Ian, [Facebook] is a life-ruiner; it ruins people’s lives. Sometimes Facebook gets too complicated, drama gets started over something trivial and people can break up. But where would we be without status updates and wall posts? It’s really just a toss-up.

-Kelly