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There is a quite a large difference between the two.

Calling is an active interest. It requires specific action from the caller, and potentially interrupts the callee (which may or may not be desirable).

Facebook and other social media allows a more passive interest. The information about how the person is getting on is passed on, but the "caller" isn't needing to worry about disturbing the "callee" and the callee is not interrupted.

Sometimes we don't call because we don't care, we don't call because we don't want to impose.

This passive information forwarding replaces to an extent the part of the "village" culture that has been lost a bit as our populations have grown more and more densely packed yet the people we care to "follow" are often spreading geographically further apart. Because not everyone knows everyone, the "oh, did you hear" conversations don't spread as they once did: there are wider air gaps (filled with signal noise, i.e. the rest of that dense population) between the connected nodes in the network.

Of course social media is emulating the worst parts of that village culture grape-vine, as well as the useful parts...

Actually just wrote an edit to address this but I'll repeat here - I think it's a generational thing. It's not really about keeping up with specific people - when I want to do that, I just message them like you say (side note - in my experience people in my age group don't tend to have many people's phone numbers). Basically, I grew up using Facebook, which meant I've always had these constant life updates from people I know. So I've gotten used to it, and feel like I'd be losing something without it. Objectively, I think my life would be unaffected if I really were to delete Facebook, but I enjoy having those updates nonetheless. To be clear: these updates are usually information I wouldn't bother to find out otherwise.

It's sort of like watching the news - realistically a lot of news doesn't affect our day to day, but it's just interesting to see things happen. Like yesterday USA won the women's world cup. Did that have any impact on my life? Not at all, but it was nice to hear about. In that sense, Facebook is like a more personalized feed of news that always features people I at least used to know. It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again, but at this point I only check Facebook a couple times a week so I don't worry too much about it.

It's not entirely a generational thing. I'm a lot older than you (Facebook became available to non uni students when I was 30) however, I've moved around a lot. Different countries, different US coasts, etc. As a result my friend group is spread over different continents and across different social classes—things that make picking up to go visit or reach out for a simple phone call pretty difficult.

FB has been a great way to not only maintain contact with people but to reunite with people I knew in childhood and adolescence that would have otherwise been lost to me. I don't spend much time in the app at all, but I appreciate being able to reach out or to offer emotional support (congratulations, condolences) in ways that would be impossible were I working my way through a phone book every month or so.

> It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again

You might be interested to read an article⁰ where Sean Parker stated that they consciously designed Facebook to be addictive, by exploiting "dopamine-driven feedback loops".

⓪ - https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-facebook-was-designed-to-e...

> It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again

For all we know, human groups have always used gossip as a way to bond. I guess these Facebook updates are addicting because they are a good implementation of something humans have always felt the need for.

This makes sense. I figured out what confused me in your initial comment: to express the thing you described I would have used "see what they're doing" instead of "see how they are doing". For some reason the latter form is associated in my brain with caring and so, active interest.

Not the person whom you're asking, but to me a phone call is extremely invasive, and it feels awkward to call anyone that is not a really close friend or relative. And I also don't particularly like to be on the receiving end of such a call. A text is much better, but still more awkward and invasive than Facebook for people that are just acquaintances that you see very seldom.

I think it's a generational thing. I'm 36 and I see that most people over my age accepts phone calls to nonclose friends or acquaintances as normal or even desirable, as you do, while most people under my age instinctively avoid them.

This never used to be true. People used to call each other all the time. I'd call my friends when I was 12 and just talk on the phone.

Facebook posts are lightweight, asynchronous forms of communication compared to phone+voicemail.

They're also light on social interaction.

Compare:

    - Sending a post about your holiday experience to Facebook, vs.
    - Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk about your holiday experience and how they've been lately.

Sure, you won't be able to tell all your 1276 "friends" about your holidays, but the people you do talk to will actually be/become your friends. It's quantity vs quality. Personally I've decided that it's more important to me to have a few dozen really good friends in my life, instead of hundreds of people that passively take part in my life, thinking they know me, never really interacting with me in any meaningful way.

> Personally I've decided that it's more important to me to have a few dozen really good friends in my life, instead of hundreds of people that passively take part in my life

That's a false choice, though; while I don't use FB, everyone I know who does still keep a few good friends that they meet and talk to regularly. You and I could be scrolling our FB feeds right now, instead of reading HN, without taking time from our existing friendships.

    >  They're also light on social interaction.
    > Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk

Do you see the irony here? The small-talk you're describing in a Facebook post is just as socially-anemic as the small-talk you'd have over the phone.

If I want a deep conversation with somebody, I can message them on... FB messenger or something. Again, a form of communication easier to initiate than a phone call that they might not be able to pick up.

I don't see the irony. How is it "socially-anemic"? It is in my opinion obviously much more social to talk to somebody on the phone than to post something on Facebook. Even 1-to-1 chat as you mention is much more social (but loses an insane amount of nuance and emotion), but still much less so than a phone call (but I also chat of course).

Or do you consider everything that is not face-to-face "socially-anemic"? Are you saying that conversations via chat are deeper than on the phone?

With a Facebook post one is essentially just dumping a complete story on the masses for them to consume. It's not personalized and people cannot interact by asking questions in between, or by adding their own stories ("Oh, I loved that part of the movie! Did you also think it has a deeper meaning to it?", essentially steering the conversation into another direction), or show you that they don't want to hear about something, for example.

You're also constraining yourself to updated from people who use FB. What about the rest of those people? If you want to get updates (and update) multiple people, why not create an email list and blast all your friends and family? Or maybe a text message?

Because the number of people religiously on FB is far higher than those that check email on a regular basis?