Facebook beats Google in 2010? This needs to stop.

By Alexandra Petri

Before we head into the new year, I want to have a word with us.

This year, our use of Facebook surpassed our Google usage.

Let's fix that next year.

Why is this a problem?

If you are on Facebook, there are only eight possibilities for what you might be doing.

You are posting a random thought that just struck you about something.

You are writing on someone's wall, probably something that will confuse anyone else who looks on the wall, such as the word "TURDUCKEN."

You are going through all the posts of that one guy from high school who has been having a weird phase lately in which he thinks he's a werewolf.

You are "liking" something.

You are joining the Taylor Lautner fan page.

You are clicking through the photos of your former significant other to try to deduce whether he or she has finally found happiness and if that happiness is better or worse-looking than you are.

You are posting a picture that is either unflattering or compromising.

You are poking someone. This is inherently creepy. Has any stable relationship ever begun that began with someone meeting you, then deciding to poke you? No, probably.

If you're Googling, you are at least theoretically expressing the kind of curiosity that is not synonymous with stalking.

You are trying to prove a point to someone. You have just whipped out your iPhone. "Hold on!" you are saying, "I'm looking it up." He is looking it up simultaneously on his Blackberry, and it is taking him much longer.

You are Googling yourself.

You are trying to remember what the name of that thing is by searching for other things that remind you of the thing.

You are typing in a legitimate question into Google to see if it will suggest that question back to you, thereby proving that you are not the sick, lonely weirdo you are beginning to worry you might be.

You suddenly wake up wanting to know something oddly specific, like what, if anything, Paul McCartney thought about Yoko Ono. You feel that you must know this, and if you go any longer without this particular piece of knowledge, your life will not be what it might have been.

I find all these uses reassuring. But apparently, they're going out of vogue.

If you don't think it's a slippery slope, consider this: In 2007, MySpace was top. Now it's a laughingstock.

The only reasons you might be on MySpace is if you're a band or if you're a cop pretending to be a fourteen year-old in order to confuse pedophiles. I can't even think of another reason.