Why do I still use Facebook?

Most mornings I still check my Facebook feed. More and more I am wondering why. There's never anything of interest before I start scrolling. This forces me to scroll. First a few ads, then some suggested posts. Mixed in are some posts from content providers that I liked or looked at enough. These are mainly funny video clips such as House of Bounce or Americas Funniest Videos. I like these for brief entertainment purposes to pass the time. Really I could be doing something more relaxing, like reading a good book.

Within these first 20 posts or so I might see 5 posts from friends. These are often shares of either stuff I am not interested in or a repost of something they did a few years ago. Nothing wrong with that since they are my friends. Rarely am I interested the former and I don't care too much what they did 5 years ago, although they are nice memories. If amongst the first 20 posts there is one real update from a friend on what they did I am happy. But I had to scroll through about 5 pages of irrelevance to see it. I get a slight concern that maybe I missed something. Consider briefly to scroll back up. Think "Nah, can't be bothered" and go and waste my time somewhere else on the net.

It turns out that my friends are posting interesting things about their lives, but Facebook's algorithm is not showing them to me in my feed. So I have to go onto their walls individually to see what they are doing. That kind of defeats the purpose of Facebook to me. It didn't used to be like this. I used to see all the posts of all my friends in chronological order. I object to Facebook deciding which of my friends' posts I get to see.

I removed their app from my phone a long time ago, because I didn't want to be tracked all the time. It's harder to remove Facebook from my browser. I don't want to delete my account, because for many friends from a long time ago it's the only contact point I have. I hope to use it less often in the future. Certainly not every morning and then throughout the day! Habits are hard to break, even when you notice you get less and less pleasure out of them. This of course is Facebook's ace card. It knows you will keep coming back for that little dopamine surge. I will try to resist a little more in future. We'll see how I get on in a few months time.