It's a fallacy that all technology can be criticized for banality. Technologies are different. Some are more criticizable than others.

Telephone was the first infrastructure to provide real-time voice communication. It enables families staying in contact, but it also enables economic growth, and a more effective society writ large.

Television is now a mindless wastefield of race-to-the-bottom drivel, but there are newer networks have haven't yet succumbed to drive, mostly on digital cable. I only have the respect for science and technology that I do because I grew up watching The Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy. My parents watched the moon landing on television.

Facebook does not do anything novel, nor has it ever been used for anything terrifically insightful. It provides some social value and exists for that reason, but it is clearly not equivalent to all other technologies.

I don't quite get it. Being able to transmit images is "novel" but being able to query more information that has ever been available before in the history of the human race is not?

You should really separate the application of the technology from the technology itself. Your last sentence can be said the exact same way about the telephone "It provides some social value and exists for that reason" but that is clearly a ridiculous statement to make about the telephone.

My comment was more of a dig at things like banks which barely will let you view your financial transactions more than a year or two out. Yet I can pull up someones stupid rant about a basketball game from 7+ years ago on facebook.