- Fewer people are going to movies, so the people which are left hold different preferences
- Changing demographics
- potentially just a youth culture thing. I don't know what young people are up to these days, but _more_ phone use in inappropriate situations certainly doesn't sound surprising
In my experience, inappropriate device use is definitely NOT just a "youth" thing.
Back in the day people would grow out of it, now they have no incentive to if they actually gain money (from ads) or notoriety from doing it.
“acting out” is age “appropriate” and is nothing new, but social media has caused a form of escalation.
where once you might have heard rumors of that brash young man that did the wild thing a few towns over, and happened to survive, now there are “celebrities” that have built entire careers off of their initial public stupidity, and droves of youths eager to follow in their footsteps. because it might be lucrative, or at least cool.