You’re 100% right that third places didn’t go anywhere. I do volunteer work and fact is, teens have incredibly short attention spans now due to instant media in their pockets. On the rare occasions I get a volunteer that isn’t a grey beard, the young person (usually dragged to the place by an adult) sits in a corner on their phone. Most put in absolute minimum effort so they can get on their device asap.

The kids aren’t dumb or uninteresting or anything like that, they are just plain addicted to phones. The rare volunteer kid that puts 100% effort in is usually a homeschool type with no electronic devices or someone in the top 1% of their class or something like that.

The attention economy is real, and it’s dominated by phones and by those that were born in it.