My time on Facebook made it abundantly clear how racist, misogynist and otherwise vile a large portion of the people I grew up with are. I was much happier having a superficial contact with them once every ten years at a high school reunion. I'm no longer on Facebook (or Twitter).

Occasionally, I'll see/hear/do something and think that it would have made a good status update/tweet, but then I remember that these things have happened to me for decade before social media was a thing and life was fine. Some I'll share with my wife or a friend, most just disappear and that's fine too.

People seem to not know that you can unfriend or at minimum unfollow people on Facebook.

Why did you put up with racist and misogynistic people on your feed? Why did you feel the need to delete your account instead of unfollowing people?

My feed is nice and clean, with family, some friends, and some pages.

I did. Facebook also spent a lot of time dumping stuff in my newsfeed from people I wasn't friends with (Twitter also liked to do this). It was a lot easier to just not have all that crap in my life.

An act of unfriending someone is interpreted as hostile action. It's much easier just to not be there in the first place.

Then unfollow. They don't know if you unfollow.

How about you call them to set up a meeting to catch up?

Why? It is not as efficient. I can buy everything from stores but I use amazon, same thing. I don't actually use facebook though because I don't care about anyone really but for people that care, it is a solid platform.

There is a gap between "I want to know what people I know are up to" and "I want to meet with those people one by one to see what they are up to". Some people just want to passively watch and that is ok.

> Some people just want to passively watch and that is ok.

And this is the culprit for loneliness.