It seems to me that the direction of the thinking goes the other way: in one, you think of a friend and contact him, in the other, you think of yourself, show yourself to the world and people send you likes.
When I thought of this, it seemed to me that social media is often some sort of "narcissistic exposure of oneself" and encourages this type of behaviour from me and I didn't like it. This plus the fact that I didn't like Facebook's behaviour with it's user's data made me delete my account, and I didn't miss it since. If I think of friends, I have other means of contacting them that have a more personal feel.
I forget where I read it, but it's similar to the idea that if someone you love makes a meal for you, at the end of it, you don't ask "how much do I owe you?" and break out your wallet. It's distasteful. Likewise, you don't do someone for a loved one or friend and afterwards say, "well that will be $X".
Posting on social media has a reward of sharing and liking, and as a result, to me, it turns human interaction into an exchange. (And I will admit that there is an element to that already, in terms of owing people favors etc., but the "bookkeeping" that we do is generally in our heads and is hard to quantify, which makes it a bit fuzzier and less commodified.)
You don't get the warm fuzzies when someone tries to harvest intimacy across hundreds of their relationships simultaneously with a post? Weird.
I love seeing a post about something that made a friend happy, but so much of the content on facebook is so obviously not an honest post about something that made somebody happy, but rather something they felt should have made them happy, or something that somebody else would be jealous of, or worst of all a brand trying to co-opt the "something that made me happy" style of posting, that it's ruined the few honest moments of joy.
But seeing people who are your peers, who have mostly followed the same paths as you being far happier and living much full and rich lives (by appearance), and _only_ seeing that, I think, becomes a subtle reminder of your own failings.
We just need to see some of that sheen taken down. If, somehow, we saw _all_ of the shit people go through in their lives, and not just the good, maybe social media would be way different.
Personally, I find it incredibly shallow to post about food you're eating or places you're visiting. That's just money, and you might as well just take a picture of the money you're spending. I prefer to see things people make in my feed (art, woodworking, metalworking, electronics, etc.). It impresses and inspires me to see people out there making the world better with their minds and bodies, not just consuming.
There's also the asynchronous nature. If you're out with friends and hear about their engagement after the fact (among other catching up), that's one thing. But when you're sitting on the couch lonely and see photos from moments after the engagement (and nothing else), it's just that much more of a gap.
Then throw in everyone's highlights with their outrage and some random shared clickbait (fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:You won't believe what this evil politician did!), and it's just toxic.
Most people will probably acknowledge that it's more complicated than that. I think it might have to do with how easily comparable the other person's life is to our own.
I can't explain it well, but here's an example:
I saw a video of a child surprising their step-dad with paperwork for the official name change (kid accepting the Dad's last name). The Dad cried out of joy.
The video made me feel good.
On the other hand, seeing someone that I graduated highschool with getting promoted and being more successful than me makes me jealous.
Why? Because he has something and I don't, but would be within the realm of possibility to achieve. This behavior can also be observed in monkeys, so I don't question it too much.
I'm not a super active user, but as an observer, I do wonder if much of it is pushing those same buttons but in a perhaps more subtle way— like a lot of "wellness" creators who cultivate an apparently authentic persona from which to deliver a never ending stream of motivational you're-worth-it type content meant to encourage and uplift, but that ultimately rings a bit hollow.
As these sites/services gain more popularity communities tend to splinter and it's up to the service to keep things going in whatever direction they want to via things like the fyp algorithm.
presumably there are some personality types that social media works well for, as opposed to personality types that work well for social media, of which there are clearly a lot.
I guess the one boundary is that I don't generally mine my interactions with my kids for internet kudos— I don't want my camera in their faces when we're at the park or reading a book, making them feel like I'm only there spending time with them to score internet kudos later.