I think its a fair assumption that most people make that whatever data which isnt explicitly displayed to a regular user is not public. Having likes be public but hidden is misleading.

Assuming people use a vpn is a bit of a stretch. I dont know anyone that does that constantly.

They didnt??

Get into taking news slowly. Maybe set one day in the week for you to catch up on what happened a bit. And resist the urge to go checking for news constantly. Getting news from social media make it seem like a lot is going on all the time, but its mostly a lot of noise and many rehashings of the same “news” (especially if you get them through memes in social networks). Getting news on sunday is cool because you let matters cool down a bit and people have had the time to express what has happened better (theres less journalism on the weekends I guess).