Why do we use Social Media in the first place?

In the early days of the internet, email was the main vehicle to share interesting content, photos, and memes (they were not called that yet).

The forums solved the problem of going beyond the close circle of people who had your email address. Even the introduction of upvoting posts solved the problem forums themselves brought: too much content!

But along this desire to connect and share with other humans came another very human trait: to be liked. Furthermore, when the platforms that are running ads next to the content noticed the more liked a post is more the revenue, they tweaked and fine-tuned the content up to the point where we no longer see just things other people with our similar interest share. We now see topics we were not even interested in initially. And the pushing for more viral content favors content that is in many cases divisive.

There have been some attempts to solve this problem. But whatever the solution is in the future, it will have to address what I think is the original intent of sharing with others while keeping in check the adrenaline that to be liked produces.

What else do we use Social Media if not for that?