Reading my first post on your account, @tarazkp, I wonder if we would confine this statement to just children:
"For instance, parents who sit their kids on a screen at a restaurant or in the car to keep them quiet, are doing their children a disservice."
For a Silver Blogger who did not grow up with this "disservice," it is remarkable how often I see adults at tables and elsewhere doing nothing but stare at their screens. One standout example being out with one near and dear pointing to a group of 5 young men dressed in hunting garb. All sitting around a circular table, they were not talking to each other, they were staring at and pecking away at their phones. Not for a minute or two either. I never saw them look up the whole time we were there, including their efforts to pick at their food then look back down at their phones.
It was a sad spectacle.
"We are creating a life of withdrawal from the world of interpersonal interaction, as if we are all on the autism spectrum, unable to cope with anything that makes us uncomfortable."
No question of this and we are only beginning to experience the inevitable consequences.
If you sit around and watch a group of young people, even when they are talking to each other, they are rarely able to look at each other's faces - instead, they look over the shoulders, as if searching for something more interesting to grab their attention.
True. The damage to the attention span of our younger generations is another aspect of damage done, with consequences still in the early stages of even being acknowledged.
What has been your experience, when these young people get together and actually manage to strike up a conversation, with having one of their phones indicate they just got a message or similar? Can they keep their focus on the person they are talking to? Or do you find most simply seem incapable of not turning away to check on what notice they just got?
Not to be crass, but Pavlov's Dogs come to mind. The lack of regard and respect for those with whom they are supposed to be sharing good company is just another aspect of the same fundamental problem.