Maybe the cell phones are “mini teleprompters”...it gives the kids something to talk about on the chance they do communicate with a live person, in person.
That is probably part of the problem; the phones brought fake news and leftist divisiveness to your pocket, and now two young people can find little in common. All deliberately engineered, breaking people into smaller and smaller groups, so the views of the far leftists seem more mainstream. Trump cobbled together enough voters based on a couple of common themes enough could agree on: The economy sucks, the foreign invasion of our country is a bad thing for Americans, and most of our politicians despise us.