I think that it's true. I also think that the societal changes affect everyone, but that it really hits teenagers the hardest. In general, I think that car culture is also a huge contributor to this. Another contributor to isolation is that American culture places an inordinate emphasis on winning, an emphasis that is inappropriately applied to nearly every aspect of our culture. The problem with the emphasis on winning, is that if one isn't winning or a winner, then one is losing or a loser. That's a lot of pressure and I think it fucks people up on a fundamental level. After all, now more than ever, teenagers are aware of the perceived necessity of going to university and likely grad school, or some other kind of post-undergrad training, in order to "be competitive". When this is coupled with the goal of winning, it can very easily undermine social relationships.

Personally, I was growing up just as AIM was taking off and while ICQ was still present in people's lives. What it did was allow me and my friends to coordinate our activities out of earshot or our parent's knowledge. I guess what I'm getting at is, it seemed to encourage us to be more secretive than we might otherwise have been, because we had the opportunity to be. This is a trend I see continuing with my cousin's kids, even if my cousin is a pretty cool parent. What bothers me about being secretive, is that it allows people's shyness, (say for example, of having a crush on someone and working up the courage to ask that person out) the opportunity to thrive, instead of forcing people to grow thicker skin.

Overall, I think people need to get back to having a lot of face to face social interaction in their lives, especially because it is so very easy to render others into abstract beings and for errors in attribution as to other's motives, feelings or intentions to run rampant.