I was actually an early adopter on Facebook too. I got on in 2005, back when you needed a college e-mail address to use it. Back then it had a similar feeling to what Steemit has now. It was a bit exclusive, and at that time a welcome alternative to the then spam filled MySpace.
Now I feel like Facebook has hit that tipping point. There's just very little value there it seems like. Lots of political opinions, tons of useless uninteresting information, but like you said, it's easy, it doesn't require any effort on your part.
The steep learning curve of Steemit is something I've written about in the past and imho, the biggest barrier to entry to Steem getting mainstream adoption. The most basic premise is definitely compelling. "It's a social media platform where the likes are worth money" That's my best one liner, and with that I think most people would be interested enough to give it a shot, but when they get here, they'd have to take a seminar to get up to speed in less than weeks if not months. Hopefully this changes in the near future, I have faith it will.
Bingo! I actually created a video and text online training for my friends so that when I would ask them to come try it I could also give them that to get them started. And you know, of the 5 people who did start that way, not one of them is regularly posting, and most aren't posting anymore at all. People really don't want to work that hard unless they're getting paid by the hour for guaranteed returns from hour one. There is something of an entrepreneurial mindset needed here, as well as liking to figure things out and learn new things.