[BeetleB]

>I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.)

It's a continuum. I used to write letters once. I loved email when it was new ("new" where I lived and amongst my friends). Within a few years, people who once wrote me a few pages of letters would rarely write more than 2-3 lines in email. It's gone downhill from there.