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I firmly maintain that phones are a symptom and not a cause. The cost of going outside is much. Many third places have collapsed under the crushing weight of austerity. Our time is ruthlessly regulated. Transport is expensive. Everyone is tired and sick.
Phones, social media, are what's left.
This 100%. I also maintain that heavy social media usage is a coping mechanism just as much as it is a cause of mental health problems. You wanna talk about an opiate of the masses? I watched my parents exhaustedly zone out in front of the tv to deal with their shitty fucking jobs for decades. Now I’m doing the same thing except with my phone.
The cost of going outside is much.
I literally can't afford to get a haircut right now 
yeah you can get a phone and internet cheap compared to ]anything else you might want. it's no surprise people spend all their time online given the material conditions we're forced to live in
Newspapers and what became before them weren't addictive, dynamic skinner boxes with millions of dollars in machine learning behind them trying to map out and manipulate every aspect of your behavior. It was just good old fashioned one way propaganda.
that's the individual analysis, i'd argue newpapers could occupy a similar function in public spaces of a tentative 'do not disturb' sign that phones do. the OP is talking about people in public and it's a pretty valid observation that people used to have ways to avoid talking to others and making relationships too.
I think the non-thought-terminating way to interpret these datapoints is that the modern version is an amplification of whatever you want to call this, just like the 24-hour news cycles have been compounded by minute-by-minute updates from news delivered by social media pages and now Telegram groups and such. It's not the same because there are (real and substantive) parallels with what came before, that's a crass simplification.
People werent chatting up strangers before smartphones. In the 2000s it was exactly as awkward as it is now to start a conversation with a stranger unprompted. Unless you were both smoking.
The only sad thing about people not smoking cigs anymore is you don't get the great chats that come from people asking to bum a smoke/you bumming a smoke off a stranger. Cigarette chat is easily the best part of being a smoker.
Cigarettes were an easy way to tell people "I don't give a shit about the things that you're supposed to give a shit about." When you saw someone smoking a cigarette, you knew you could talk politics or religion or any number of contentious topics with them. It didn't mean it would be a good conversation, but the invitation was always there.
Wow, I just realized I hate vaping.
I find it much more worrying to see kids constantly on ipads and shit. Like how it's much more concerning to see a child smoking than an adult smoking.
I don't blame the parents btw. Everyone is tired, child care is unaffordable. Society atomizes us and keeps us away from our extended families that would have provided childcare in the past. A one-income family is basically impossible for most people.
I think when talking about phones, the issue is not so much people are on them but what they’re doing on them. Many people in this thread have pointed out other things that have occupied peoples’ times in prior eras, and phones sort of serve that purpose now. But what is on the phone is so bleak. Social media is horrible for us and pretty much designed to get us addicted. Everything is either an ad or a grift or some sort of astroturfed propaganda. And you have children being exposed to this shit also, extremely young kids with easily molded minds with unfettered access to the most mind numbing and in many cases dangerous content. I think that’s the issue.
I barely use my phone for anything other than "being a phone", and I still never leave my apartment. 
spent a morning out on the town on my day off and everyone is just fucking buried in their newspapers 24/7
no wonder people are having so much trouble making friends and creating meaningful relationships in this day and edge. so fucking bleak
went to the town market on my yearly day off and everyone is just fucking buried in their tablets, stylus in hand, carving away.
no wonder people are having so much trouble making friends and perpetuating meaningful oral legends in this day and age. so fucking bleak
Alternatively, most people probably weren't just making friends walking around, doing their shopping, etc anyway. Those are kind of weird ways to make friends outside of pretty specific circumstances. Who knows, maybe they were texting their actual friends
This seems to be an issue in more developed countries or richer parts of developed nations. I don't see this as much in my area. Smartphones do exist and there are a few who become attached to them but the majority still get out and talk with each other. If anything, phones are a great way of knowing when it's time to leave. You can tell people are ready to go when the majority start looking at their phones. It used to be that people just wouldn't leave until late at night because nobody wanted to be the first to go and I was never a fan of that.
Another thing is that the previous generations were just as attached to TV's. The same kids you see glued to their smartphones and throwing fits over them getting taken away probably had parents who were the same way with the TV and their videogames. Doesn't make it okay but it always bothers me when people assume it's exclusively a Gen Z/Alpha problem.
You can't just declare your opinion to be non-boomer, that's not how it works
not gonna lie, i was hoping this post would be about genocide, climate change, and looming WW3, which are the reasons I think society is headed in a bad direction. Not like... people buried in their phones, which is a total boomer trope.
Wait, is this post bait? 
Would you say the West has fallen? How many billions must die to correct it?
boomers will all be like this is why we cant have phones but not realize without solving alienation people are just gonna do something else instead
The lack of observation and curiosity for nature is my main complain. Like think about it, can you identify a single tree?
groot 