>otherwise do nothing to improve your life.

I overwhelmingly agree, but disagree in one regard; there is some signal in the scream of the noise and in not engaging whatsoever you miss that sliver of signal, which can be very important events in friend's/family member's lives they've chosen to document there, or maintain some sense of contact with people who are now geographically distant, etc.

Overall their effects are indescribably negative, simply due to how they effectively game people's innate insecurities, but they do have 1 to 2 uses that do improve the life of a private individual.