As someone who's had to run programming groups and do the programming work, I will say open floor plans are the worst idea ever.
If you need/want to get into the zone on a project and actually make progress, the open floor plan will keep you from doing that as much as possible. For breaks, the last thing I would be doing is going on facebook or checking email or doing other useless crap like that.
Your job sounds horrible if people can just walk up any time for any reason. And if you're spending time looking at cat gif's then I think you or your manager needs to revisit how you're spending your time. Doesn't sound like work to me. Sorry...