Wechat/Line/Kakaotalk handle this without the damages of Facebook and the like. At least for KakaoTalk, it's not a "social network" in the same way your contacts list isn't one, but since everyone [in Korea] is on Kakaotalk it makes adding and maintaining friends easy. You don't have to worry about people deleting their accounts because there's nothing -to- delete an account over; it's just a chat app that everyone uses.

It would be nice if there were a similar app in the US with that kind of market share, instead of everything being scattered among various apps, etc.

The only real issue I felt with deleting my facebook was losing access to facebook groups. I was very close to making a burner account to participate in some groups, but I never ended up wanting it that -that- badly as meetup sufficed.