As an artistic statement this just feels... infantile. Before phones, people were reading books or magazines separately in bed, or reading newspapers on the train. When I traveled to various third-world countries before phones were a thing and people didn't have money for newspapers, people stared blankly out into space on the train or bus or shared van. People weren't social with strangers. In various modern African…
I wouldn't necessarily call that boredom, not in all cases anyway. Not having the constant ADHD content/info/distraction feed phones provide can be a boon too.