I dislike that middle bit of your last paragraph. I also have friends that I talk to, don't know why having a smartphone hints at my lack of friends. Other than that, yeah we just have different ways of life. I embrace new tech as I see how it can help me and how I can incorporate it into my life. Also all my information is backed up on at least two different hard drives (I quickly found out in highschool that the amount of copies you have of something is # of hard drives - 1). If something happened to my phone, laptop, or desktop I'd just get another and load everything back on. I've never dealt with a power outage that lasted more than 8 hours, the life of my phone.
Sounds like you appreciate redundancy too, with 2 different hard drives! Me telling you what happens in my life is not a statement about nor a judgment of yours. I like how we are both adopters of technology in different ways. A smartphone certainly is an always-on, always-connected (with friends and information) economical use of space in your life, and as you say, the data is replaceable in the case of damage or loss. Do you live in the city? One day I may be more mobile; for now, I am rural, so the internet is not wireless hotspots, it's cable or landlines. Is that part of reasons for the difference?
Oh okay that makes sense. I read it as a demining "kids these days never talk to one another" instead of you talking about how you communicate. My bad. That's probably it, I didn't even think about that. Such a foreign concept to me to not be able to access the net at all time, it's been that way for me all my life.