> 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...