[socillion]

My personal experience has been similar. When a group conversation peters out, its easy for a lot of people to pull out their phones instead of continuing the conversation - and when one person pulls it out, everyone else does as well.

It definitely seems more noticeable among the ~17-18 age group than ~20-25 (20 here but I had an odd childhood and behavior patterns like this were explicitly discouraged.)

Good news is that not everyone does this.