I don't think the issue with phones is that people aren't engaging with each other in public spaces. I'll stipulate that it has never been the norm to engage wi

I don't think the issue with phones is that people aren't engaging with each other in public spaces. I'll stipulate that it has never been the norm to engage with strangers on public transport. But I see a number of other differences between then and now. For one, I don't think it was common for people to take a newspaper out of their pocket and look at it during social events with friends and family whenever conversation slowed down for a moment, or whenever it pinged with a notification. I observe my own wife spending far more time looking at her phone today than she ever spent reading a book before. Ten years ago, she might get lost in a book for a day or two, if it was a really good one. Now she walks around the house with her phone in-hand at all times. I had to pry myself back from that after starting to notice the same behavior in myself.