It seems to me the problem is with the very idea of social media, it's inherent to it. It used to be very active in various mainstream social media and got excited about the Fediverse after closing all my accounts elsewhere... Well, at the end is more of the same. I left all form of social media (centralized or federated) three years ago and it's been really good for my well-being.
I agree with you, but let's be honest. It doesn't help that the Fediverse is implemented mainly as cheap imitations of better-known, corporate-owned platforms. IIRC, Diaspora* was founded with the explicit aim of out-Facebooking Facebook while being decentralized/federated. GNUsocial, Mastodon, Pleroma, etc. all want to out-Twitter Twitter while being decentralized/federated.
But the fundamental problem is that nerds for whom high school (and possibly college/university) were miserable experiences are building platforms that turn the internet into a global high school cafeteria.