Empty Chair Diaries: Entry 7

The Feed That Changed

I was scrolling through Facebook the other day when I realised something felt different.

Not suddenly different. More like walking into a place you’ve visited for years and slowly noticing that the furniture has been rearranged, the familiar faces aren’t sitting where they used to, and the conversations have taken on a different tone.

For a long time, Facebook felt like a community noticeboard mixed with a neighbourhood gathering. You could open the app and quickly see what was happening in the lives of people you knew. Someone had gone on holiday. Someone had become a grandparent. A local business was celebrating an anniversary. A neighbour was asking for advice.

It wasn’t polished and it certainly wasn’t perfect, but it felt personal.

The posts weren’t always interesting. In fact, many of them were wonderfully ordinary. A photo of dinner. A dog at the beach. A child losing their first tooth. Yet those small glimpses into everyday life were what made the platform feel human.

Over time, I found myself seeing less of those moments.

The familiar voices didn’t disappear overnight. They were simply replaced by more content, more noise and more things competing for attention. The room became busier, yet somehow felt less connected.

Sometimes I scroll for several minutes before seeing someone I actually know.

And when I do, I stop.

Not because the post is remarkable, but because it reminds me of why I joined in the first place. Beneath all the technology, social media was meant to help us stay connected to one another.

I suspect many of us miss that feeling.

Not because we want to go backwards, but because there was something comforting about seeing the ordinary details of people’s lives. It reminded us that behind every profile picture was a real person living a real life, dealing with the same ups and downs as everyone else.

Perhaps every generation experiences this when something evolves. Places change. Communities grow. New voices arrive while others drift away. It’s a natural part of life.

Yet every now and then, I’ll come across a simple post from someone I haven’t heard from in years. Maybe it’s a photo from a family gathering, a snapshot from a holiday, or a reflection on something that happened during their day.

Those are the moments that make me pause.

Not because they’re extraordinary.

Because they’re real.

And in a world where so much competes for our attention, real can sometimes feel surprisingly rare.

The empty chair reminds us that we’re not always searching for more information, more entertainment or more content. Sometimes we’re simply looking for the familiar voices that once made the room feel like home.

And perhaps they’re still there.

We just have to look a little harder to find them.