Late 2000s was just after smartphones became a thing, and before they became a crack epidemic. In my personal experience, it has really been bad for about the last 10 years, getting better over the last few years however. Took a few years for everyone to really understand how bad the problem had become and how quickly.

Here in india it became normalised to bring it to school around 2016. But even today it's completely not OK to use it in class. It'll be confiscated immediately.