True, school is nice in that it forces you to hang out with your peers, and that isn’t really emulated later in life. But I don’t think that’s the point.

The point is that it’s just tougher to have non distracted conversations. Or even non distracted periods of time hanging out.

It just feels awkward when someone is sitting there texting with someone else in front of you. Or just looking something up on their phone “really quick”, and then is MIA from the conversation for five minutes.

This is it. They don't warn you in high school, but after school your friends will be in colleges or jobs miles away. This is just the way it is and if anything, cellphones would theoretically allow people to stay connected.

Both. It makes it easier to keep in touch technically, but whether or not they are responsive is a whole other story.

Well, connecting gets harder in the sense that we're no longer all forced together into the same space, but phones have added a severe second layer to that. It disconnects us from those physically around us in order to digitally connect us with people not physically present.

Prior to phones, eye contact was pretty frequent. More small talk between strangers happened. People were far more aware of those around them. That's just not the case now.

Again, smartphones have brought a lot of good to our lives, but the physical connection to people around us has been paralyzed. It really is sad, and I'm sad that it's not something I'll ever experience again: a space that physically connected. I'm sad that younger generations will never experience it their whole lives.