I think the answer is pretty simple, at least from the perspective of someone like me, who isn't a sociable person and would rather sit alone than with others - people are fucking boring.
I'm not talking about everyone, of course. There are a lot of people out there that you can have amazing conversations with, people who know a lot of things and who are an amazing company.
But you can't find those kind of people everywhere. Instead, you find the boring ones, the ones that watch the news and want to have a conversation about all the bad things that happen in the world, those who talk about politics like their opinions matter or can change anything, those who don't know anything except what you can already see on Television.
When I see people complaining about the fact that too many kids these days don't talk to each other any more and they just stare into their phones, I immediately ask myself "Talk about what? What would those kids be interested in talking about? They would talk to someone with common interests, and they are, using their phones, because in a lot of cases, those people are far away".
We're complaining about interaction not being a thing anymore, when that's not only false, because people interact with each other every day, but it's also stupid to think that face to face interactions are so much better than anything else.
For me, interacting with a person face to face can end in two ways - either that person is amazing, interesting and you can enjoy each other's company, which rarely happens, or, what's more likely, you two will have different interests, will discuss trivial things and will rather wait for the conversation to end so you can both leave or you'll try to persuade the other person into doing what you want.
We can take relationships as an example. One of the main reasons people end up breaking up isn't because of all the problems that appear throughout the relationship, but because those two people are different and at some point one of them is gonna be miserable doing what the other one wants, out of "love".
Imagine two people being together, and one of them loves going out, spending entire nights at parties, while the other one loves to stay home and read books. No matter what you do or say related to how "love changes people", one of them will be miserable either being alone doing what they like or doing something they hate out of love for the other one.
Then they break up.
It's not about a problem that appears or about one of them making a mistake. It's about two people rushing into something because that's what society wants, interaction, not taking the time to get to know each other and finding themselves in a situation they hate.
I'm not saying interaction is horrible. I'm saying it's overrated. I'm also saying that one of the reasons people focus more on their phones rather than other people is because on their phones they can talk to those they enjoy spending time with, compared to real life, where you're stuck talking to a bunch of people you probably hate, people who are completely different and boring to you.
Things change, and so do people. We're not like our grandparents any more. We don't want to accept others because we're afraid of ending up alone. We want to find those people we really connect with and spend as much time with them as possible. If we can't always do that in real life, then we'll do it using our phones.
It's still connection. Society simply doesn't like it to be that way, because of all kinds of stupid reasons.