Now I have been using Whatsapp as my only "social media app" basically as stated in another comment: Whatsapp updates, you can see the updates of your contacts, then you can react or send them a message. And these updates only contain the people who you have as a contact and they have you as a contact, so you only receive the updates of the people you care about and if there is someone you don't want to see their updates you can turn off updates for them.

I hope meta doesn't ruin this feature.

It's Also available in signal I think