sounds like BS, I was teenager in quite poor European country, in 1998-1999 I was one of the first two people in my class to have mobile (I've inherited Philips Fizz from father, my rich classmate had some Nokia), by 2001 when I served in military I was switching already two phones per year (I remember it because I traded one of the phones (Siemens) just during the leave in city where were my barracks), in 2001 literally every adult in poor European country except old seniors had already phone and definitely vast majority of teenage students

I learned about attacks when visiting netcafe (just some irrelevant foreign news) and then guys in my platoon were listening to radio and even our local TV channel strangely aired CNN footage instead south American telenovela guys watched for pretty girls. we had talk in evening with highest captain or mayor in our barracks in evening, we doubled our shifts to protect installations (guys were happy, at least they had someone to talk to legally during guarding) plus nearby nuclear power plant, first night of 9/11 I spent with unplanned night shift on the fax waiting for instructions from HQ and later was forced to guard as well despite as bureaucrat I should be pretty much exempted from it