Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook
When I first joined Facebook, I used it like a typical social network back in the day (added as many friends, acquaintances, coworkers, etc as I could), with very surface-level interactions (pokes, shared cows and sheep with contacts, etc).<p>I would post interesting articles I read and make really lame quips about life or what I was doing.<p>Later, after I got married and had kids, I consciously experimented with posting photos of my kids. Engagement on my posts shot up. This led me to gradually phase out article sharing and life quipping in favor of kids' photos.<p>I still consumed interesting articles shared by contacts though. And the curated news that Facebook offered, even though I realized it had a risk of being an echo chamber.<p>Eventually, I started weeding out people who fell below the level of a real-life friend, because I didn't want to share family photos with them. Facebook became a place to share kids' photos and see kids' photos from friends and family.<p>Now, I mostly read reddit for interesting articles and discussions. Some Facebook groups are decent for that, but they never quite match the reach and range of discussion that reddit does.<p>Facebook is now my family-photo-sharing service. And even then, I've begun to slow down my usage in favor of other mechanisms for sharing kids' photos.<p>Some of my actions were motivated by privacy concerns. Some by conscious experiments in engagement. And some by the utility, or lack thereof, of Facebook in general.<p>I wouldn't consider myself a typical Facebook user, but anecdotally, a decent number of friends have told me their interactions with Facebook have matched mine.