I went to high school in one city, college in one 1,000 miles away. Have since worked in cities all over the world. I don't know how I would manage to keep even a tenuous grasp on all the connections I have with people in these different places without Facebook. Admittedly, these are not and never will be deep social bonds I am maintaing, but that is hardly the point. There is value in maintaining a large web of shallow social connections. Facebook helps me do this.
Moreover, whether or not Facebook has improved the life of me or anyone I care about is irrelevant to an objective evaluation of the site's value. I could make the same case for anti-malaria drugs.
I have been in a similar situation, with my College and Hometown very far away. Now, with all my friends spread out from all over the world, Facebook makes seeing these people again a fun (and fairly easy) occurrence, rather than an onerous task.
That is, the connections may be shallow while we're far away, but when locations change again, its nice to be able to re-develop those shallow connections into meaningful ones.
Stop. There is no value in maintaining shallow social connections. Work on making your actual friendships stronger instead of having 1000 acquaintances on Facebook. Your life has not been improved by Facebook beyond regular old email.
Shallow social connections have earned me two jobs and a number of deep social connections by leapfrogging off of shallow social connections.
If you think there's no value in maintaining shallow social connections, then I think you too need to put some energy into adding meaning to your social connections.
