It's about drawing a line. I drew that line two years ago, and not once have I looked back or otherwise felt any semblance of regret or frustration from it. Among SMS, email, Telegram, Google+/Hangouts, ordinary phone calls, snail mail, in-person, and the cornucopia of other communications options out there, there's zero reason to put up with Facebook's nonsense.
You can fix that by removing your birthday from Facebook. I did that one year and it turned out as expected, people only wish you happy birthday on Facebook, because Facebook more or less tells them to.
I decided against because it was so useful as an "every once in a while" inbox for people who wouldn't have been able to reach me otherwise: a girl I met at a party, a cousin from Australia who happened to be in town for a couple of days, etc etc. The former would either never find me (depending on how big the party was) and the latter would have to jump through the hoops of chaining phone numbers through our large extended family. Both of those are handily coopted by having an almost-universal directory, with customizable amounts of information displayed, along with photos so you know it's the right profile.
This is typical trope of the "why I have to be on FB." Download everyones contact and or sync to your address book. When people are in town they text you or email you. Trust me it works. People found each other just fine before FB and they can just find now.
Um, did you actually read my comment? Roughly half ofit was dedicated to the fact that being able to find me by just my name and photo is easier than trying to track down my phone number; I'm not sure how you missed that....
Why do you think it would be any easier to find my email address? If anything, connecting us across my extended family would be a lot harder through finding a bunch of emails than finding a bunch of email addresses. I honestly don't know what reality you're imagining where everybody has the email address of everybody they know.
Same thing here, I drew this line about 5 years ago. Now everybody knows that the only reliable means to communicate remotely with me are : Emails/Signal, or regular phone calls/SMS as a fallback.
Only people worth talking to (family and close friends), do the effort of reaching me on my preferred communication channel.