Your phone experience reminds me of how, at about age 18, I coveted a Sidekick so much. I knew that it had AIM built-in. Since SMS was too expensive for me to consider a replacement for instant messaging, this seemed to me like the holy grail of teen socializing. To be able to use AIM anytime, anywhere...I could only imagine how cool it would be, especially if all my friends had it too.

I finally got something exactly like that in 2008 (both with mobile AIM clients, and as SMS and iMessage steadily overtook AIM for the purposes we used IM for), but it strikes me as poignant that as an adult, it wasn't really as meaningful to me as it would have been as a teen.

I guess what I'm saying is actually, I kind of get why the gen-z kids became so terminally online. I would have availed myself of the ability to socialize, privately, nonstop day and night!