I agree completely, I did the same thing and now I've been going back gradually. Staying in contact passively makes starting conversations much easier, commenting on their stories, them reacting to a big event, etc. It keeps people in contact, because nobody reaches out of the blue now.
Losing such a network of people is costly, socially and from an opportunity perspective.
Still trying to not click anything not related to people I follow, the algorithms on meta apps are just insane.