Or so says The New Paper New Face finalist Raine Ng, who logs on the moment she wakes up every morning to check for new notifications.

For dinosaurs who aren't Facebook-savvy, 'notifications' alert users to what's happening with their friends.

Photos might have been added, a friend could have invited you to take a quiz, or someone could have thrown a snowball at you using the SuperPoke! application.

Whatever, anti-Facebook Zi Liang snarls. Fun, fun, fun, Raine enthuses.

With 86 friends listed on her page in the six months the 21-year-old has used the site, she has her hands full spreading her attention among them.

The Temasek Polytechnic alumnus spends up to two hours on the site daily even though she meets up with many of them, mostly former schoolmates, regularly.

'It's hard to manage so many friends at one go, but with Facebook, we can keep in touch. Everyone's on it nowadays, and I can find friends I've lost contact with as well.

'It's also a good way to pass time. I visit my friends' pages to look for applications that I can add to my own page. It's very interactive, unlike Friendster.'

If you're not a personal friend and hope to contact the beauty through Facebook, forget it. Raine doesn't add anyone she doesn't know into her list.

'There have been a few guys who've tried to add me as a friend and sent me messages like 'You're gorgeous'. I just ignore them because they're strangers,' she said.

While the thought of parents joining the fray on Facebook is enough to make any youngster cringe, Raine can't wait to add hers as 'friends'.

'I found out that an uncle who's in his 30s is on Facebook. I'm going home to 'add' him tonight,' she said.

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'YOU'RE not on Facebook?' Sarah asked, sounding like I just told her my nose was on my forehead.

I was tempted to answer that I hated to be poked, but my varsity friend had already turned back to her screen to continue a food fight.

All around campus, people seated next to each other were whooping in delight as they fought werewolves and vanquished vampires together.

Others were huddled over a screen checking out someone's online pet.

The almighty Facebook, home to over 59 million users worldwide, seemed to have it all.

But if these people were seated next to each other, why couldn't they simply interact without the social networking site as a proxy?

Just so they could all jump on the same bandwagon and be with the 'in' crowd?

As for the feeble excuse that Facebook keeps you in touch with your friends, get real (literally), I say! How genuine is one's profile when it's usually filled with only the most flattering photos?

If you really want to know someone, spend some time together hiking up a small hill.

The next time I met Sarah, she had turned into a Facebook zombie.

Her eyes were glazed over from two hours of valiant attempts to clear the 269853 alerts that she had received.

It was only after I poked her with a ruler that she responded.

'Still not on Facebook?' she asked, before telling me about our friend Jack, who was not on Facebook until recently.

Jack's steely resolve came crashing down one day when he bumped into his primary school crush.

After a charming conversation where they promised to meet again soon, she ruined the moment by enquiring, 'Do you have Facebook?'

He rushed home in a taxi despite the fare hike to sign up immediately.

But even as my friends - and I don't mean those listed as 'friends' in your profile after knowing them for just one day - succumb to the lure, I won't.

Hot as it is, Facebook is just a fad.

Do you remember Friendster?

This article was first published on Dec 31 2007