Believe it or not, the problems we have with social media and smartphones were around long before the internet came about, they just took on different forms.
In the 60s (when she was a teenager) a new hand-held radio of some kind became really popular, because you could adjust the channels easier than with older radios, and it was light and portable (looks over at 80s brick phones and today’s smartphones).
People would walk around with those things up by their ears, happily listening to their own personal music, but would have to stop and readjust the signal every so often (looks over at 2010s people with phones in their ears or absorbed in them).
People formed “social networks” in times past would be for, say, moms to make friends with every mom in the neighborhood and form a little “club” or “clique,” and often they’d all gather together in someone’s living room to hang out, gossip, play cards, and force their poor daughters to sit around and be quiet, instead of letting them play outside with the boys (looks at all the different social networks of women today who do something like that online [sans daughters] and partially online, partially in person).
Not to mention men making friends with the guys at work and they all go out drinking on weekends at the bar just to chat and talk about “guy stuff,” (looks at guys almost doing the same thing online, but many are home with their drinks while zoom chatting).
Things like that happened over and over again over the next few decades, with idiots messing around with new tech and getting hurt, or people joining groups to make friends and find common ground.
The only real difference between that and today is that it’s all done online and communication is faster. That, and people are making friends over bigger distances than they used to, forcing a lot of relationships to be carried online, rather than in person due to difficulties involved.
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