There already is a reasonable alternative for connecting with the people you know. Group chats.

Your implication is correct in that there is no reasonable alternative for distracting oneself. At the same time, I'm not sure that if you were to build an alternative, it would not degrade into "content" scrolling as well.

That’s the problem:

-under network effects, you can’t spin up a viable indie alternative (like you could for a note taking app) because you need to massively attract users

-the less engaging social platform is the less economically viable social platform

So the natural end point for any social app is content doomscrolling