Whether for good or bad, the existence of phones has changed the human condition. Perhaps irreversibly. It's not just how we consume news or work. It's a very personal change. Remember in the nineties how we'd all have to plan ahead of time to meet up with friends or family or go on a date or whatever? You had to wait until evening, call when they would be home or leave a message, set up a time and place, and stick to it because once you left the house you couldn't coordinate further.
So whether or not that's good or bad is beside the point. It is a profoundly different method of socializing. Communication was sparse and delayed and you couldn't change plans or cancel 30 minutes ahead of time without looking like a dick. We are different for this. In some ways good, in some ways bad, but we have such a poor understanding of how it's working for us in the greater scheme of things that this fact alone should be somewhat alarming. And no, you can't just choose not to participate. Not having a smartphone on your person at all times and being always connected, always reachable, and always able to be obliged to work or respond or go do something at another's command is now tantamount to not participating in society.
Before this existed, we did a lot of the same activities in other ways as you said, but the restrictions of the medium we had available truly did change how it all worked in a tangible way. Yes, a similar thing happened with radio and land lines and other forms of technology before, but the extent of the change was lesser. The developments of the past ten or twenty years are so much more efficient and powerful and difficult to evade that they deserve unique consideration.