Not saying you're wrong, just that your ideas don't work for me.
Last year, I found myself in an unusually unhappy place. Partly COVID lockdowns, partly changes at work, partly politics (US resident). My wife noticed and told me to get off Facebook/Twitter/etc - they were making me visibly agitated. As I weaned myself off those platforms, my happiness and stress levels improved.
I'm glad to be (mostly) off the platforms. It's been a massive improvement.
Facebook was the biggest culprit. I unfriended anybody I didn't know in meatspace. I unfollowed anybody I hadn't spoken to live in a year or more. My feed is now mostly photos my parents post, a few cycling groups, plus some marketplace activity. I no longer feel the need to check daily (or more) - once a week is plenty.
I do find I use Instagram more now. But, because it's "just photos", it doesn't stress me out like Facebook.
Twitter only gets visited when somebody links me to an interesting thread from elsewhere (here or other forums). I never go on my own.
I made a twitter account specifically to not have any friends and not do anything, and treat it the same way you're treating it.
Same reaction: it's been a massive improvement. I wouldn't go back. Looking at that stuff from the outside now, it feels like a trap. Amazing how they can turn making you miserable, into an addictive behavior.
We are apparently, as a species, more driven by panic than pleasure, and the algorithm optimizes for this.
I stopped using it because I was getting cross-ways with people I otherwise highly respected, over political comments which invited open disagreement. I didn't want to be at odds with these people, but Facebook has designed the service to facilitate this, and has engineered the degradation of personal relationships because of it.
That's strike one. We all know how to avoid difficult conversations in real life, because we can feel them creeping up on us, and we change the subject. On social media, you state the whole argument, and then people feel free to do the same, and put their spin on it.
For thousands of years, people have ebbed and flowed through life, met new people, and stopped seeing others. A very large part of the problem with Facebook is that it destroys this natural flow of life, and tempts you to connect with every human being you've ever said 2 words to, and then keep that connection forever.
That's strike two. When you compare this situation to how humans have lived for thousands of years, it's an almost-grotesque abrogation of the natural order of things. There are relationships that SHOULD fade away, and others you should ACTIVELY eliminate once you know where they really stand. All social media platforms are designed to treat your follower number as the end-all-be-all sacred metric.
I don't have a strike three. That was enough for me.
FB's problem is fundamental in the way that you described but I'd add a few points to it:
Not only does FB artificially try to revive relationships that have run their course (and also gives all of these past relationships permanent access to your thoughts), IMO FB fundamentally misunderstands "connection" - that or they understand it fine but are utterly cynical about it.
In what way is mindlessly thumbing through a high school classmate's wedding photos "connecting" people? People who you haven't spoken to in a decade or more? The primary uses of FB seem to be passively perusing the musings of people you don't care much about, which despite what FB PR insists, isn't making me care much more about them.
The FB news feed is one of the least social things I can think of! It is consumed passively, nearly always by yourself, and doesn't actually create any interaction between myself and others besides simple "likes".
I keep waiting for the arrival of social networks that actually meet their own lofty claims - software that actually facilitates the development of meaningful relationships.
I'll do you one better. I deleted my account back in 2016, in the run-up to Trump's election (cause I just didn't want to hear it). Just before I did, there was a whole rash of connection requests from my high school classmates. Facebook blasted out that one person had re-connected with me, and a dozen others suddenly thought that would be a good idea too. I graduated THIRTY years ago, and hadn't spoken to ANY of the others since. Most of the requests were coming from people I wouldn't even have called friends AT THE TIME. That's just not normal, but on Facebook it is!
I use Facebook basically the exact opposite way. I don't friend anyone I interact with on a regular basis (family, coworkers, neighbors), and use it exclusively for people I don't have another good way to keep up with - people I've met while traveling, people into the same niche hobbies, that sort of thing...
"Could I interest you in everything
All of the time
A bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time"
What are we paying, when we're paying attention?
We pay with what we could've done and what we could've learned. We pay with the people we could've met, and the conversations we could have had.
We pay with every future us, that we could've been, We pay with the values we did not live by, We pay with the goals we did not reach, We pay with every opportunity to become more fully alive, that is now gone.
We pay with the moments of joy that never happened, We pay with the peaceful sleep, and the refreshed feeling in the morning, that we didn't get.
Because we were busy paying... attention.
Here's the video on Bo Burnham's own channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
It's hard to find content that doesn't overstimulate you in that state. Sitcoms and chill twitch streams work so well exactly because the extent of what is happening is safe, predictable and confined, yet the process is slightly different every time.
Isn't it friendship and social delight?
If we did, that's where FB would live. It's a kind of friendship surrogacy - noisy and occasionally entertaining, but facile and shallow.
And that's the definitive effect of ad tech. It makes everything facile and shallow.
Politics becomes polarised and infantile and hostile to nuance. Social interactions become gamified ("Follow me and I'll follow you back to help both of us reach 1,000/10,000/100,000/millions!") Clicking Like becomes a displacement activity which avoids real political change. Relationships become performative. Businesses become all about engagement and persuasion - using the same old template of techniques and page designs - and not about social value.
I think it's naive to expect Apple to push against this, because Apple are part of the problem. Apple World is a shiny place which includes exactly the correct number of minorities and age demographics all living the officially approved clean, smiling, sunny, fit, healthy, efficiently organised, and brightly decorated middle class consumer lifestyle that Apple products try to personify.
This isn't even about technology. FAANG (and Microsoft) have created a shockingly undiverse collection of overlapping online worlds which define too many elements of work time and personal space - and all with a 1950s tone of optimised conformist consumption, mandated self-improvement, and transactional time trading.
Because it wasn't an issue yet, our mothers didn't put an arm around our shoulders and say "aw honey, the ingredients of friendship include awkward movements, inconvenience, sacrifice, vulnerability. You can't do it without those essential ingredients."
The result is there is just enough friction that I don’t bother going to get the number. But if ever I need access I can alway go get it.
But unfortunately it is a human problem (exploited by apps, but still a human one), and anything done by another app is just treating the symptoms without treating the underlying issue.
I recommend the book titled Atomic Habits. For short term “solution” you may try rearranging app icons like reddit, fb to some obscure position to make it just a bit harder to find them (do not totally hide them since you will just revert it), and I read that turning on grayscale also deceases the “joy” we get from addictive apps. But I found the last one way too limiting on usability.