[birthcert]

I never had an account, and due to this, lost out on many social gatherings (exclusive Facebook) and lost the ability to stay in touch with old friends or get all updates on my family (parents mostly).

The good outweighs the bad for me, but it hurts nonetheless. If you fare better, all the more power to you, but do note: out of sight, out of mind. You may not fully realize what you are giving up by not having a digital social network, from not being able to use Tinder, to more serious stuff, like not knowing a childhood friend has died.

Not being on social media is the equivalent of not having a mobile phone 10 years back. The "essential"-part of Facebook (and other companies, like Google) actually plays a role in European directives. It is why Google has to clean its index on request, and a small niche search engine does not have this responsibility.

[StudentStuff]

I have an account, but I ceased using it 5 years ago. My "friends" were essentially all people I had met in highschool and rarely talked to, and upon a recent visit (over Tor of course) I was wholly unimpressed with my news feed.

The only benefit was reconnecting with a former exchange student we had hosted, luckily she already had Signal! Besides that, my feed was just tales of woe from people I used to have a coincidental connection to.

Perhaps I'm an oddball, but my SO is banned from Facebook (real name policy), parents consider Facebook to be spyware, and extended family has held it in poor regard (not of my doing surprisingly) for a decade thus far. Getting lots of pressure to join a Mastodon server though, seems the extended family is all on that. Not what I'd expect from a bunch of mid-westerners!