To me Facebook is the biggest problem. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I check the app on my phone many times per day - almost compulsively - to see if I have any notifications. I get a small burst of enjoyment catching up with friends, but, all in all, it's mostly an unpleasant distraction.
Taking breaks from that distraction - as the subject of this video did, by leaving her phone at hone - feels very refreshing. To help myself take structured breaks from Facebook, I actually made a simple Web app called Facebook Detox: http://www.codyromano.com/fbdetox/
I used to feel exactly like you about Facebook. I would check it constantly, so much so that when I cmd+t'ing to open a new tab I would often instinctively type "f+return" to have Chrome open the site.
45 days or so ago, I deactivated my Facebook account. If you're not familiar, this allows you to "pause" your account -- nobody can access your profile or interact with you on the site while deactivated, but once you log back in, your account instantly resumes where you left off.
It took a week or so to overcome the Pavlovian urges I had developed from years of habitual Facebook additction (albeit often for intellectually stimulating and/or social causes).
The bottom line was this: I've been loving every minute of it since. I feel more free and less tethered to my phone and computer. I have more down time and I find myself less stressed out and, frankly, feeling better about myself.
Oh, and one more thing, lest you assume (perhaps reasonably) I didn't have much doing on my Facebook account anyway: I'm a high school senior. Facebook is huge at my school, and a lot of fun grade/school-wide gossip/interaction/planning happens there. And you know what? I'm president of the student body and if it's important, people can tell me in person.
For me and my fiancee it was Reddit. We'd spend hours each day on there just meandering away the day, and not even realizing it. I blocked Reddit on our network at home about 6 months ago and we haven't logged in since. We're both much happier people now. I think Facebook and texting need to come next.
We've talked about this several times and came to a pretty surprising conclusion: in today's world television is actually pretty "healthy". It involves truly turning off the brain and actually relaxing and escaping, and requires an attention span of 22 minutes or more. With Reddit, Facebook, texts, etc, you constantly shift attention every 20 seconds, and never really allow your brain to turn off and disengage. You're neither relaxing nor being productive; at least tv has a level of relaxation to it. Kind of frightening.
I'm in the same boat as you. I deactivated my FB account roughly 2 months ago and deleted the app from my phone.
I feel a lot happier. I'm not constantly and pointlessly checking FB. I still hang out with friends, I communicate with them via SMS, phone, email, IRC, Twitter, and so on. If someone really wants to contact you, they'll find a way.
I've started to use Twitter more, it satisfies my needs. To improve the experience, I put most organization accounts in a private list and unfollowed them. I also unfollowed a bunch of people I didn't personally know. I don't want my Twitter feed to be a constant stream of advertisements and junk posts (like how my FB feed was). I'm slowly trying to reduce the number of people I'm following to 150 or less.
I did log into FB once since I deactivated my account, and that was to remove a lot of information such as likes, groups, "friends", etc.
Facebook is least important for people in your situation (still in school). You can't help but physically interact with most of your social circle, as you sit in the same building as all/most of them on a daily basis.
For those of us who are older and out of school - I don't live in a city with any of my family, many of my best friends are (literally) all over the world. In the past, we'd just (most likely) drift apart / lose contact. Now? We can stay completely up to date on each other's lives, talk/communicate daily, as if we were at the bar carousing late into the night, as we did 10-15 years ago. These people are important to me, but there is literally no way to talk to them in person, without spending $$$$ on plane tickets/etc.
Actually, your use case was the #1 reason for my problematic proclivity toward Facebook. I too have friends from all around the world (people I worked with on open source projects, people from programs and schools I used to attend, etc). It was because of these connections that I felt attached to Facebook -- I couldn't exactly bump into someone living, as you suggested, vastly out of my proximal social circle.
How have I delt with this? Well, I'm not completely sure. For some who I am particularly close to, I text or IM them on occasion. To keep in contact with a few people, I actually created a new Facebook account with only those people as friends, and then only used the account as an IM client via Facebook messenger.
Honestly, the latter idea makes me wonder: maybe the reason my Facebook experience was so problematic and low S/N was because I (due to typical social pressue) was friends with way more friends than I genuinely want to stay in active touch with?
I don't know. You make a good point, and clearly I don't have a good answer; I've addressed those needs on a case-by-case basis.
If I can dream for a bit, I think my ideal technology solution to this would either be teleportation or immersive 3D video conferencing. It'd be pretty damn cool to "grab lunch" and catch up with someone on the ohter side of the world.
Taking breaks from that distraction - as the subject of this video did, by leaving her phone at hone - feels very refreshing. To help myself take structured breaks from Facebook, I actually made a simple Web app called Facebook Detox: http://www.codyromano.com/fbdetox/