Hey humanodon I know you're a big fan of phone calls and conversations. What're your thoughts on this? And also, how do you feel about conversational silence?

And in general:

He notes that sometimes there are things that are hard to tell people in person. Shooting them a text or an email is often just easier,

"Harder" does not mean "worse" or "less appropriate," though. It may mean "worse" from the viewpoint of the person who has to deliver whatever information this would be, but sometimes news must be conveyed that isn't going to be comfortable. By frequently interacting face-to-face, including saying the things that walk a line between "not easy" and "not socially mandated to be an in-person conversation" (like deaths, divorces, break-ups), we learn how to handle, and appropriately convey or receive, the worse news when we need to.

If we rely mostly on phones to communicate, because of "the ease of communication," we are setting ourselves up to flounder when the times comes for an stressful, important, in-person talk.

We allow mindlessness to take precedence over the insight that strangers — that any of us — can offer each other. We're looking down at our phones when we could be looking up at all there is to see

But this author also falls into the common trap of assuming that before cell phones, people didn't find other ways to distract themselves from reality. Remember those things called newspapers? In my far-gone youth ;) I was never without a book.