Staring at your phone is no different than staring at a newspaper. Trains used to be full of people buried in newspapers, now they are full of people buried in phones.
Well, I did say that before smart phones, we used other things to achieve the same means. When I had people over during the mid 90s, I got peeved when they started reading whilst I was talking to them, too.
It's not your age. I'm 67, and I love my iPhone, thank you. I love being able to look directions or anything else up online wherever I am, I love the convenience and quality of the camera, and I love that I don't have to carry a separate address book or calendar or "to do" list. On the other hand, I do sort of miss the Trekiness of a flip phone.
I've never bought a cell phone--ever. I may be the only person within miles with a landline. I do need to get one at some point. All the pay-phones have been taken down. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/object-lesson-phone-booth/515385/ 2600 magazine has nice photos of old phones from around the world.
TNG for me, thanks. I used to have it, a couple phones ago. Got some fun reactions from people. And when I was still working in corrections, the ringtone for all my work-related calls was Folsom Prison Blues.
I only have the TOS sound for when my dad calls me. All other callers (the ones not in my contact list, anyway), I get this: In fact most of the tones on my phone have a distinct Minion theme. srsly, @teacake is right. Before the iPhone came along, people were buried in newspapers. And before that, it was something else. Which is why it amused me so much when Bill Maher (who I used to think was annoying, now I just think he's tedious) went on a rant about how supposedly iPhones and all the apps on it are somehow specifically engineered to make us addicted. That's just another iteration of the "Kids today!" joke, which of course never ends...just repeats itself endlessly with each new generation... (besides, Maher himself has a Twitter feed, so he's got some nerve complaining about social media. )
...and if I lived back then, I'd be grumbling about people who won't pay attention to their dinner companions for the paper!
I had the Nokia ringtone from Star Trek XI for the longest time.. christ it was annoying .. And NO ONE ever said to me "hey is that the ring tone from Star Trek XI" Now I have the organ music from Karazhan (world of warcraft) which I enjoy so much I often let it ring just a little longer.
Mine is the theme from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've had it through several phones. The last phone I had I was able to even get the wolf howl at the beginning, but not with this one.
I don't read the newspaper while walking down a street though! I read it in the tram or train, or waiting at the doctor's office. There is nothing wrong with that, to kill time. But all those zombies at the street are weird indeed. And it is bad for humanity, if young mothers don't talk to their children they push. How are they supposed to learn anything? I'm 43 and I only have an old Nokia, no smartphone. Most of the year it is switched off, I only use it when I travel, to be able to meet up with friends etc. The rest of the year it's landline and laptop. In East Germany, we didn't even have a landline, we had to stand in line at the phone booth. You were supposed to have only short talks, there was a sign for that. Then again there was nobody we could call, as none of our relatives had a phone either... I once read something that scared me. I follow a guy on Twitter that writes cute things about his four daughters. Once the little girl who was watching a comic at TV while at the same time watching a second comic on the phone while watching a third comic on the i-pad complained about being bored.
I've never seen anybody reading a newspaper at the dinner table or walking up to a cashier with a newspaper in their face. I went out to dinner at a steakhouse a few weeks ago. At the table next to us was a family with 4 children and three adults. Instead of talking to each other and having a good time, all but one had their faces buried in their cell phones.
Back in the day, my husband and I used to sometimes read the newspaper at the dinner table, but only in our own house, and only on a work day, when it was our first chance to read it. "Are you done with that section yet?"
I use a clip of music from Tron:Legacy for my ringtone and the original "de-res" sound effect from the first movie for alerts.