[bluGill]

SMS and (to a lesser extend) email are not ways to communicate with distance friends. Someone I went to school with 30 years ago and haven't seen since isn't going to call me about their new grandkid, Facebook works well to share these types of pictures. SMS and email take too much effort, Facebook is much lower friction to share that and thus I find out, while if they uses SMS or email I wouldn't be on the list as they would give up before they got to my name in their contacts.

[ozim]

Someone who went with me to school 30 years ago and did not sent me an sms or some kind of message - is not my friend and I don’t care.

My distance friends have contact with me at least once a year and mostly at least once a month via WhatsApp.

I do not need feed for that and if someone is gone - it is gone I don’t have time to hunt down people who are not in contact with me anyway.

[reaperducer]

SMS and email take too much effort

If writing an e-mail to a friend is too much effort for you, then you're not a friend. You're an acquaintance, at best.

Low effort means low quality. If all you have to offer is low effort content, what makes you think anyone wants to read it?

Be less lazy.

[bluGill]

I'll accept Acquaintance. I still want some connection - we will meet again in person someday. However because they are that low and it will be years I need to put most of my effort into friends.

[0xEF]

Many of the replies are saying something similar, so I apologize, as I am not trying to call you out, but to better understand; ask yourself why you need to know about the grandkid of someone you went to school with 30 years ago.

So many of these things that we use to sell ourselves to hang on to social media tend to crumble under any honest scrutiny. This upsets people. I get it. I mentioned in another comment having dealt with a substance abuse problem in the past, and the same pattern emerged. I had a problem, but refused to recognize it, so I rationalized continuing down the same path by performing some mental gymnastics about why I needed to keep doing this thing. It was pretty eye-opening when I went through the exact same process during my time leaving Facebook a few years into my sobriety.

We are social creatures and social connection is undoubtedly important to our mental health. But like all things, it tends to be better in moderation. In the case of FB, is hearing about a grandkid from a distant acquaintance a meaningful relationship? Conversely, do the likes we might get from distant acquaintances on our post add value or fulfillment to our lives in any meaningful way?

I posit that when we engage with these unfulfilling interactions, we spread ourselves much too thin, causing stress and anxiety by drawing our energies away from relationships that are closer to home, in some cases maybe driving distance between them. Sure, I can only speak from my own experience, but I've yet to see anyone's life change for the worse when walking away from social media. Hence my concern about why people seem so desperate to stay, and make no mistake, from this perspective and the replies I generally see when this gets brought up, it's the same excuse-driven desperation I see in fellow alcoholics that resist recovery.

[nradov]

I don't need to know, but I want to know. Social media interactions doesn't cause me any stress or anxiety: rather the opposite. Most of us don't have problems with substance abuse or negative social media engagement. You shouldn't generalize from your own very limited experience or presume to give advice about things you don't understand.

[lumb63]

Does this desire to want to know things about people you no longer associate with, not strike you as strange? There is no actual communication here - on one end, there is someone who either has no group of people whom they feel care about their update, so they “share” it with everyone; or, they are so conceited as to think everyone on the entire internet cares. On the other end is someone who does not know what they want updates about, but knows that they want updates from some set of people (but does not want the updates enough to actually talk to those people). This mode of “communication” has for a long time struck me as very strange.

[jameshart]

Back in the previous century, people used to do things like post birth and wedding announcements in the local paper. If you had moved away it would not be unheard of for you to be sent a clipping of such a thing by a grandparent letting you know about an old schoolfriend or teacher or neighbor. Keeping in touch with the ongoing life trajectory of people you once knew has long been something people liked to do.

[bluGill]

I still associate with these people. I go to my high school reunion every 5-10 years. sometimes I go back home and run into them on the streets (not often but it happens). Because I see their pictures I recognize them - when you have not seem someone for 30 years you won't recognize them in person when you go to renew that connection, but if you see pictures you can talk to an old friend who life has drifted you part from. (as opposed to talking to a different group of friends and both of you leave wondering why the other didn't even show up as you were hoping to reminisce about something with them)

[RiverCrochet]

It strikes me as strange too. I understand wanting to believe your life is so important that you think the world at large needs to know, but the converse - truly desiring to be the receiving end of those announcements particularly of people you don't know very well - I cannot wrap my head around.

[nradov]

No, it strikes me as being completely normal.

[FredPret]

Exactly - social media is the perfect way to replicate that “town square” vibe our cavemen ancestors must’ve had to communicate with distant social connections, short of having an actual town square.