[blazingfrog2]

I speak to human beings daily. I've known dozens, or maybe hundreds, of human beings who have never been so rude as to pay more attention to their devices than to me when in the middle of a conversation.

I don't know you but, if you're not 20 years old, like the parent, you're talking apple and oranges.

[Bakkot]

I'm 20 and can never recall having had the experience the OP describes.

[ceol]

I'm 23 and laughed when the OP talked about "remembering junior high" and how "people never did this shit back then, because they couldn't." Yeah, you probably couldn't find a middle schooler with a smart phone back in 2005 (the year the OP was in 8th grade), but you damn well know they were playing with Game Boy Advances and, later, Nintendo DSs. They were on Myspace and Livejournal. They were exploring EverQuest and Battlefield 1942.

It seems the OP is suffering from a severe case of nostalgia to think a mere 8 years ago people were somehow immune from being antisocial.