I once had an unpleasant experience with someone that effectively walked into me while reading their phone.
I was walking across a pedestrian crossing near Central in Zurich during morning rush hour, so it was very busy. I was in a bit of a hurry, but couldn't run as there were too many people. A woman coming the other way, looking at her phone was on a direct collision course and because of all the people I saw her quite late. I stepped to the side and she walked into my rucksack (with a hard laptop in it). Hard to explain and I'm not exactly sure how it happened.
She turned and screamed (and I mean screamed) "Arschloch!!". I was pretty surprised and made some motion with my eyes to indicate "look where you are going" but I probably just looked like a nutter.
It is a bit odd that the vast majority of people didn't use to walk around with newspapers and magazines, like it is with phones nowadays. Probably something to do with convience
During morning rush hour, some guy tripped and fell down the stairs at the station while looking at his phone. The rest of the people coming down the stairs stopped briefly to look up from there phones before dipping their heads back down on the screens.. almost zombie like
We've just returned from a week at a family resort in Turkey. What I found profoundly depressing was just how young many of the kids with smartphones were. And the fact that many families would sit in the restaurants, the kids glued to their screens and the parents likewise. By the pool, on the beach, during shows etc.. the same story, all transfixed by their bloody phones.
It is not, really. It is logical. Early exposure, convenience for the parents, en plus - kids copy what is normal for their parents. I think hip people with desire to offer this to kids early should see the scenario you describe (if they themselves were not in fact glued to their fast stimuli screens), but one does not have to go on holidays for that. Restaurants, parks, even public pools, etc. Then try to teach kids, giving them books to work with and wishing they could actually respond to a boring, non moving page and have the patience and concentration to read a few lines. Their brains do not like that kind of stimuli, and it is logical. Less fun. Less dopamine. More work. Fewer "Likes", and investing in their family instead is not so in, that is normal for kids, anyways.
There are kids around who have a "grandma" phone, not a smart phone, that stays out of sight, who read books at home, on hols or when travelling. Because habits take time to form and a screen - stimulus wise - is a hardcore competitor. They also have to write by hand, not type, since they will nail that fast and when actually really needed, to form a pretty practical fine motor skills habit.
So. Not Orwell. But people not setting good examples, or not putting down some ground rules...or not thinking ahead.
Is it like the warning beep when one is reversing a car into something?
I wonder if one's brain tunes it out, after a while.