Funny, I just watched this the other day:
http://youtu.be/OINa46HeWg8
This is a great video.
And I feel ya, OP. I had to step back and take a look at my Facebook recently and realize that:
1) 90% of the posts that everyone else put up were "bragging" about their life, sometimes in such stereotypically trendy ways (e.g., picture of their feet while on the beach, etc.). They were posts that added zero value to my life. In fact, it seems like there was no intent behind them other than for someone else to "show off" in particularly unimaginative ways. In the rarer instances where people actually brought something of interest or value with their posts, the noise of all the worthless ones tended to drown out that signal.
And 2) Even though I tried to make a concerted effort not to do the above, I found that at least 50% of my own posts were guilty of the same. On those occasions where I tried to bring value to others with interesting information, requests for feedback, invites, etc., there would never be a ton of back-and-forth feedback/dialogue. Most of the times, people put in the bare minimum amount of effort and just "liked" the post or responded with a short, surface-level comment.
I don't know, maybe I have boring friends, but I would think they are at least a semi-accurate representation of the norm. I just started to realize that on a day-to-day basis, Facebook doesn't really add a lot of value to my life. A message board like this is actually more stimulating.
Whether others want to continue to use it in shallow ways doesn't bother me too much since I can opt out of that, but what bothers me more is when people's social skills or etiquette go out the window when they have their phone tied to them. I think that is part of what the OP is getting at; I see a lot of people not enjoying the "moment" as much or socializing with their immediate company because they feel inclined to check their phone for side-entertainment, conversations with people who aren't in front of them, etc. And make no mistake, it's all generations that are guilty of this from teenagers up to Baby Boomer middle management-types.