Before cell phones there were beepers. and people could always reach you on a landline. or leave a message on the machine. payphones. people weren’t really that much farther than they are now, it just required a little more coordination.
and cell phones have been around a lot longer than 10 years when this really picked up steam. even if you filter this statement to exclude everything but smart phones - smart, internet connected phones were around well before ~2012 when we saw a sharp spike begin in this trend, and that’s really the dawn of dominance of the YT/FB/IG/etc era.
I would be surprised if the parent you’re responding to is even remotely discussing phone calls or answering machine messages, but rather the depth of what smartphones enable distraction-wise nowadays. Cell phones existed before but you weren’t browsing the entire web on them. ;P
A beeper isn’t even in the same league and it’s really not a point here.
What percentage of the population do you think had them? What percentage of school children?
Nerds doing nerd stuff aren't going to affect the zeitgeist much, it's the network effect of having essentially 100% of your peers spending much of their time on social media.
and cell phones have been around a lot longer than 10 years when this really picked up steam. even if you filter this statement to exclude everything but smart phones - smart, internet connected phones were around well before ~2012 when we saw a sharp spike begin in this trend, and that’s really the dawn of dominance of the YT/FB/IG/etc era.