I agree with this sentiment. There are observable antisocial tendencies. It is often more difficult these days to strike up a conversation in places, like airports, where fellow travelors used to share travel tales, because today all the fellow travelors are staring at their antisocial media.
On the other hand, travel is not without impact, and there are so many folks on this planet who I wish I could meet face to face, but just can't travel everywhere to do it. There are those with whom I have met, but we reside too far apart to see regularly, including family. The appeal of the social media applications is the streamling of the tools for interacting with these far away friends and family. We could just call and send letters and postcards; but the convenience of sharing files, pics, vids, media, money, and videocalls,all with the same app has that appeal of ease. But nothing's free, and if these tools come at the price of privacy invasion, then they shouldn't be backed. Are there any emerging that are more respectful? I don't want to categorically reject all social media platforms as invasive and anti-social, without giving each due consideration. Clearly, LQ ranks pretty highly in my book as well.

The next generations growing up with social media apps are already way different. Caution is advisable. I wouldn't want locally present socializing to get replaced with locally virtual socializing: when we are right next door, we should tell each other on a walk, instead of texting through the walls. Getting their sense of self esteem through likes and hearts, fishing for feedback... it is changing the public psyche in a different way, that may be lowering the trust overall by creating armies of screen following fart fearing introverts.

I think @wpeckham is right as far as the fediverse beign comprised of individuals running their own servers being able to trust themselves... I experimented with a pleroma box, and like everything else, it did require some considerable configuration... I like that it can be used unfederated, just amongst a private group of friends. But trying to federate exposed the no-longer private group to content of other servers that may not be tasteful, so there was a great deal of whitelisting involved.

I can compare the influence of anti-social networks on my environment and include the part of my environment that is not exposed to them, then empirically claim that they contribute to the rotting of society.

Although I have not yet been asked to develop a theory around my observations, I came to conclusions (believes, convictions, call them obsessions if you want) and do not want to have anything to do with these services.

"Conventional forums," like this one, have a taxonomy – a structure of sections and subsections to channel the various conversations that are taking place, and moderators who can and do move them around so that they get proper exposure. They also have a very good "search" feature, and, by now, an enormous archive.

There is another group of technical forums – run by the "StackExchange" companies – which do not have any such taxonomy. (Also, it is entirely possible there to "get voted off the island." Your post must be "popular.") However, they are obviously extremely good at "attracting eyeballs," so any post that you make there is going to disappear into the oblivion within about ten minutes. Certainly, these forums are frequented by people who are extremely knowledgeable, and I have no objections at all to "the human communities there." But I find the [lack of ...] organization/taxonomy of the site(s) to be unworkable and rarely frequent them. It simply takes too long to "find the answer that you are looking for." (And, if your post is not "immediately seen" by someone who is "on the site now," it very likely will not be seen at all. It's simply a "spew of posts.")

So, I suppose the bottom line is: "LQ ... you're [still ...] doin' somethin' right." :)