Impact on human interaction is a concern in the age of social media. We will always find a way to lose time. I'm not sure if any generation is/was immune to that.

So we do lock-downs still, but it's not about working crazy hours, it's about focus. Under lock-down you are allowed to push the other stuff to the side for awhile. For instance I typically do 2-3 interviews a week, help with training new interviewers, etc. This can easily be 5-6 hours of total time out of my week. This is part of being an engineer at Facebook. Onboarding sessions, new engineer mentoring, etc. This is all part of normal workdays, unless you are in a lock-down, then you focus on getting whatever it is you need to get done done and not worry about the rest for awhile.

I personally disagree pretty heavily on sleeping in the office and working crazy hours. I find it very counter productive and generally think it leads to bad decisions, bad code, and ultimately bad products. It is certainly the exception, and not something you should be doing if you aren't 22 years old and/or more than a little crazy. I personally haven't worked crazy hours at Facebook since probably 2009.

Talking about this sort of thing from a PR perspective seems has to balance getting people excited about our environment and explaining our goals and day-to-day. I've found it's something the media outlets love to play up. The normal day-in-the-life of an engineer is fun, but chill, and not particularly news worthy.

I'm going to be starting this July. I know a good number of people in my class who interned there, and wouldn't have joined if I'd heard of 50+ hrs/wk being the norm. From what I've heard, it's a place where you may work long weeks on rare occasions, but that would be due to your desire to get something done, as opposed to external corporate pressure. Not being a current employee, I may be wrong, but that's the impression that I get.