Even before the iPhone it started happening with the Blackberry, Palm, et. al. I distinctly remember the early-mid '00's when my aunt got her first BB, a 7250(?) and it quickly became more important than anything else. Family get-togethers started to consist of her sitting by herself on her phone while the rest of us enjoyed each other's company.

My memory is that my phone was always on me, and I texted a lot on the go, but most of the texts were about meeting up, getting directions, or coordinating. After that, if a phone was brought out it was to do more of that in the group setting "Hey Sally is going to be here in 15 brining Jake"), then put back.

Now we're all dopamine seeking doom scrollers.

I've been out with a group of friends -- some I just met -- once this year. It also doesn't help that meals and drinks seem hard to justify for the price. I'm waxing nostalgia, but $30 of tacos used to be maybe $8; my $10 beer today was $3.

In secondary school, the first kids got phones and some of them were already spending a ton of time and money texting others. Wasn't for me because every text message had a fixed cost, but I followed not long after through ICQ, MSN and the like. But that wasn't on phones yet at the time, so at least it wasn't a constant possible activity.

My online social activity has declined a lot since then though, there was just so much unnecessary drama, oversharing, and vying for attention, emotional support, etc and the people that gave it burned out and left, leaving just emotionally needy people yelling into the void while the others moved on with their lives.

crackberry we called it

it happened with books, and before that papyrus. :)