Why do like loads of girls my age like saying "like" so much, like? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
Is Valley Girl speak like entering the language?

Please can you explain the origins of where the annoying over-use of the word "like" came from?

Does this have anything to do with Facebook?

Example:

Logan is so, like, stupid when he says, like, anything!
He's like, he's like an idiot or something. I don't think I like him anymore, like.

The usage of like as a random interjection/hedge/quotative particle is older than most of the girls who are using it nowadays. It certainly predates Facebook by several decades. It's one of the defining characteristics of "valley girl" speech, which originated in California (specifically, the vast tract of suburbia known collectively as the San Fernando Valley) in the 1970's.

I disagree with Martha (for the first time). The first instances I'm aware of involving the use of "like" in such a way go back to the Beat culture of the 1950s.

The others have stated that it goes back a long way.

The use of the word in that context is reasonably automatic I would say. If something is 'like' something else, it implies similarity, but not identical. So as a speech component when people are demonstrating, or usually re-enacting, a former conversation, possibly with a degree of poetic license, then you get:

I was like "Whatever!" and she was like "shut up fool".

Enabling teenagers to speak about themselves in a quote since whenever they started doing so. ;-)

What you have quoted in your question is just that extended by some years to an overused interrogative.