Every situation is different and you have to take that into account. each individual, the people involved, the things that happened to you or others etc. there really isn't an easy answer to that.

here's how I see it though. I've done it. and I can only speak from experience. The people that were dropped or as you call it "ghosted" were people that there was no other way to cut off communication. Of course I would be the type of person that also gives warning and says things that would point out why beforehand but in the end they are always the type of person who you could not move away from without just cutting them off. sad but true. This brings me to another related point though.

As tisha points out in this day and age its possible to do what you couldn't do in past eras without the phones and internet connectivity and constant always on connection to the world. But think about this also. The relationships that are based on said internet or phone connectivity are also harder to just stop. Reason being with things like social media, and texting where everything everyone is connected and statuses and such it's extremely hard to distance from people without doing such things as cutting them off, ghosting them and disabiling/blocking and such. If you stop talking to someone for good reason but you're both on twitch or some other media where you can see the other person is on or not.. it makes it quite difficult to just not talk to them anymore. they are wondering why you're not talking when they see you're online etc... about the only way to really cut off people in relationships whether for bad or good reasons, is ghosting them.

I wouldn't even take it personally.

Last job I had was target. I seemingly had a "buddy" there that was always very friendly and even thought we were becoming friends. I left the job for good reason related to bad management and treatment and when I explained this to the friend or coworker, he never replied and since has never spoken to me again. it was a sting at first but frankly I'm sure he had good reasons to do this and probably related to the idea that he was mostly friendly with me bc we worked together. *shrug* move on. frankly if I'm ghosted, it's like hey that person had reasons or didn't care enough about me anyway so it's really not worth trying to figure it out.