About social media - all I really use Facebook for, primarily, is to stay lightly connected to "friends at a distance" for fear of losing them and not being abl

About social media - all I really use Facebook for, primarily, is to stay lightly connected to "friends at a distance" for fear of losing them and not being able to find them again. Something that a contact book could easily solve, as long as you verify the contact methods were still valid from time to time. At least for me, the novelty of sharing/comparing of social details has long worn off. Not sure the cost of being data-mined is worth the value in the end. And that makes me wonder... how many people out there feel like an object to be used, mined and sold or sold to, rather than valued as a human being, or find their struggle to be recognized, powerful, wealthy, whatever too overpowering? The book "Bowling Alone" [1] is an interesting take on much of this from around the year 2000. In theory, social media must have helped with the problems outlined in that book. And yet, I wonder, has the real solution been hijacked by commercialism? Maybe. And what would that book say if written today? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone