A true curmudgeonly thought

I've long had the curmudgeonly thought that, along with reducing levels of reading, overstimulation by 'modern technology' militates against deep reflection and thought, and is likely to stifle any development of sophisticated philosophical beliefs. This seems to be overwhelmingly likely to be true (though I'm not being emotive about it, because I don't feel that emotional about it (I used to, when I was 15, 16 and 17)).
      My own story is that I had much less stimulation throughout my childhood and adolescence than the vast majority of my peers: I experienced an above-average degree of solitude and social isolation throughout a lot of my childhood (mainly self-imposed because, although I did soccer and cricket, I rarely invited friends over, because the idea of spending time on the weekend with one of my friends was never strongly motivating) and I experienced intense and acute solitude and social isolation throughout basically all of my adolescence (particularly years 7-9, when I was dangerously socially isolated and lonely). In my teenage years, I also never had a smartphone, and I only acquired a laptop in year 10. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I spent thousands of hours sitting on our lounge or my bed, daydreaming or 'talking to myself' internally (I realised only last year that I may have an unusually phenenomologically strong impression of 'hearing myself talk' (I feel like I can 'hear' myself inside my head just the same as outside my head (there's no difference in the way my voice 'sounds')) - some people apparently don't have this at all). I think this helped me develop a philosophical sophistication that most lack. What I mean by that is that I was thinking about epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, self and memory, religion, human evolution, social policy, science, criminology, ecology and nature, the nature of reality, personality, and a bunch of other topics far more than most kids. This was a very good thing for my intellectual development, I think (I'm not saying I was having very sophisticated thoughts on these topics, incidentally).
      When I acquired a smartphone for the first time in January, I spent less time thinking. It allowed me to acquire knowledge more rapidly, but having a smartphone around also makes it harder to read. And they are overwhelmingly addictive. (I think I wouldn't be writing this much this weekend if I hadn't left behind my iPhone after my maths quiz on Wednesday (it hasn't been recovered since, but Find my Phone says it's offline, so I'm hoping that someone responsible and moral has taken possession of it and for some reason hasn't handed it into to the campus assist people, who have found nothing)).
      I do almost all of my reading, outside of uni holidays, on the train. I had to discipline myself to turn off mobile data when riding on the train because I wasn't devoting my full concentration to reading.
      Incidentally, one problem I had with reading-concentration before I acquired a smartphone was that I would fall into this bad habit of reading like one or two pages then drifting off into a ten minute reverie where I would just stare at a wall and talk to myself in my head. I still do that. Bizarrely, I find thinking more entertaining and stimulating than reading.

     This is a very directionless point, but the takeaway is that we are raising children and adolescents to have very different cognitive skills to their parents. This is really kind of obvious and perhaps not that interesting.