[HoldOnAMinute]

I'm a parent in my 50's. "Peak Facebook" is years in the past for me. But it was great for a while. My spouse, friends, friends' spouses, and I were all sharing stories and pictures of our kids, travels, and experiences, such as dining experiences or hikes. There was so much joyous sharing. And it wasn't done for clicks, views, or monetization. It was just friends, sharing their experiences, encouraging each other, etc. It all just went away, starting with the husbands.

[sparky_z]

> It all just went away, starting with the husbands.

I honestly can't tell whether I'm supposed to interpret this as "The dads lost interest in Facebook before anyone else", or "Everybody got divorced."

[bentcorner]

Personally I stopped using Facebook because even in the before-AI days it started becoming a glamour photo book of everyone you ever knew (and probably lots of people you only kind of sorta know), and while people certainly deserve to do and see great things, seeing it all shoved in your face every day becomes exhausting in a keeping-up-with-the-joneses kind of way.

I totally get that not everybody is like that, but I am, and so I stopped going to Facebook.

These days I'm in private Whatsapp groups for my direct family and so I learn about what they do, and not the random stuff that my neighbors and 20-years-past classmates did.

My wife is still active on Facebook and I actually do still visit occasionally to boost her posts but that's about it.

[HoldOnAMinute]

I would say their priorities changed. They spent less time with social media and just did other things.

[98codes]

I'm a dad that stopped using facebook when I got divorced, so there's a bit of anecdata for you

[RobinL]

Or possibly 'men find the algorithmic/consumption based platforms relatively more appealing' and so were quicker to leave

[drnick1]

> There was so much joyous sharing. And it wasn't done for clicks, views, or monetization.

All along, Meta was vacuuming that data to build profiles of you, your family and friends, to be sold to third parties. You have been duped.

[insane_dreamer]

Similar experience; it was good 15 years ago. I left* and closed my account ~10 years ago.

* because 1) I found it sucked up time I needed for more productive things and I was getting "hooked" on social media, and 2) it wasn't good for my mental health -- if all you see is the glamour side, even if they're people you know, it was easy for me to feel that my life sucked in comparison. It didn't make me happy.

[Hnrobert42]

What do you mean it all just went away starting with the husbands? Like people drifted away from the platform? Husbands started drifting away from it first?

[da02]

What do your social groups use nowadays?

[wincy]

Similar experience for me and it’s just been replaced with… nothing. My gaming buddies talk on Discord but I just don’t really hear from my aunts and uncles and cousins anymore. It’d be a hassle to even figure out how to contact them. Only 13 people showed up to my high school reunion last year from a graduating class of ~400.

[hu3]

Folks around me use mostly Instagram which ironically is also from Meta.

Zuck is always one step ahead.

[bojanz]

In my part of Europe it’s all in private WhatsApp groups (one for inner family, one for friends, etc)

[prmoustache]

I am in my mid forties and most people around me seem to use instagram to share memes and stuff + keep contact with rarely seen friends and whatsapp groups for closest more tightknit circles.

I am still on whatsapp but I am planning on nuking my account in september after a large event involving people from various continents. I have no idea if I will be able to stay directly in touch with those people after that, probably not.

I am still unsure if I'll send a message to most of my contacts or if I'll just tell my nuclear family, in laws and closest friends.

[throwway120385]

Can't speak for OP but my spouse has set up a private GroupMe for posting events for a group, but otherwise everyone shares pictures using text messages. We don't post any pictures of our kid where strangers can easily get access to them and we've read the privacy policy of every service we've ever used.

I was considering self-hosting something for a while but she found it more sensible to do it this way.

Every once in a while she logs into Facebook to post something on Marketplace and immediately gets completely sidetracked by their algorithm and design. Then she gets frustrated and we just put the thing she wanted to sell on the corner instead.

[insane_dreamer]

IG, though I didn't bring my FB list over and lost contact with a bunch of people.

I keep my follow list small and regularly unfollow people (not because I don't like them or what they post, but because I've seen enough of that).

Being able to unfollow without drama was something that was problematic in FB.

My siblings and parents have a private WhatsApp group - that's what's used for actual communication.

[sbrother]

Similar experience for me and at this point it's just a collection of private chats. Different groups use different platforms (mine are on iMessage, Whatsapp, Signal, Slack, and.. actually Messenger although apparently Facebook is taking that away soon). It kind of feels like real-name social media is a failed experiment at this point.

[etrautmann]

Almost all chat threads in messages, signal, or occasionally in slack or discord or something else.

[mikepurvis]

Close friends and family: group chats (whatsapp, signal)

Distant friends and extended family: email threads

[JeremyNT]

Not parent, but, depressingly:

  1. Signal
  2. BlueSky
  3. Discord
  4. WhatsApp
  5. SMS

This list is presented in order of preference, and in reverse order of prevalence.

[toomuchtodo]

iMessages (which supports groups well with RCS), Signal, Telegram, GroupMe. Slack, IRC, and Zulip for online groups.

(early 40s)

[mattfrommars]

Personally, it’s all through WhatsApp

[SoftTalker]

Text messages, email. Same as ever.

[HoldOnAMinute]

Nothing, the sharing has stopped.

[snovymgodym]

Group chats on various apps

[yabones]

I'm probably a bit younger than the gp, but I can confidently say that all socializing has moved almost entirely off "social media" and onto group chats. Most people have a dozen or more combinations of friends and families on multiple apps, all trying to replace what was once easy.

I'd love if somebody would make a site based on the ~2010 expectations (not reality) of facebook. Ban any commercial activity and make people pay for it. I just want to talk to my friends and say "happy birthday" to somebody I haven't seen in years, not look at ads and slop posts.

[itomato]

Naive, good natured, exploitable. Perfection.

[12_throw_away]

> There was so much joyous sharing.

I'm sorry, but describing using a social advertising network as "joyous sharing" is blowing my mind. This is, like, what marketing people think normal people talk like.

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

bro, facebook was the first internet thing for a lot of people. with it, millions of *oomers got in touch with people they didn't see in years/decades. it was unironically good before the enshittification, and we still don't have a mainstream replacement. we probably can't ever have one, really.

[jtbaker]

I think it's more like the husbands left the platform first.

[dtauzell]

Probably mean that their husbands were the first to quit Facebook.

[_dain_]

The implication is that they got divorced.