Who never felt the dopamine hit of discovering 3, 5, 20, or 321 (!) new notifications? Who never came back just to get another shot?
With over two billion active users, Facebook can focus on consolidating its existing base by maximizing the time and consciousness spent by the users. The platform thus generates more and more useless notifications simply in order to increase its addictiveness.
Waiting for new notifications is in no way constructive: it fills the meditative void between events, thus suppressing the time for free, creative thinking by strengthening the user’s “fusion” with the platform.