A place for those who would be marginalised by their own community, gay, religious apostates etc etc.

Communicating with relatives on the other side of the world.

Maintaining old friendships that would have died due to distance.

Somewhere to find like minded people.

Somewhere like hacker news (I count it as social media top) where I discovered great books, expanded my horizons and learnt that there were other ways at looking at the world.

Anyway, it's not all bad :)

I live alone, and have friends throughout the US.

Social media kept me from attempting suicide during COVID. It helps me feel loved and connected.

Yeah, there are faults, but condemning it wholeheartedly is like suggesting we should abolish ICE cars immediately.

And suggesting we abandon it as a comment on a social media platform is ironically self-unaware.

Homemade Dog videos. Not sure of anything else

I think it's not even that there's a benefit to it, it's that a lot of traditional communities that had their own forums are now exclusively on Facebook groups. I'm in several groups for mountain biking, for cars, for 3D printing, and those communities just don't exist anywhere else online other than small pockets with very little activity. Discord is the other one that has captured a bunch, but it's mostly centered around gaming, memes and tech.