No, thus why I said it could be boiled down to.

However as I say in another comment, most of my family are educators so these experiences represent what they've been dealing with for the past 20+ years.

> before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!"

I think both could be true and I'm not excluding either. The issues I've heard almost always come down to entitled parents who don't want to raise their own kids but have the schools do it for them, then complain when their kid brings home a disciplinary document for not being able to follow simple conduct rules in class.

20+ years feels like a very long time for this to be the norm. Smartphone hegemony in general isn't that old.