When I'm in Germany (Eifel area) everyone greets you when you walk around the neighbourhood, sitting in the garden or walking the nature trails. Sometimes even strike up a conversation. Age does not matter, everyone at least says good morning /day /evening. Very different as soon as you hit a bigger city though. Mabe not only the phones fault?
Frequency matters. Greeting more than maybe two or three times an hour is quickly getting old, but never acknowledging a face is depressing. People adjust their threshold accordingly: in a dense city environment greeting strangers would put you far above the enjoyable range so you lower the threshold. To people you actually know, or perhaps to people who somehow acted nice specifically to you. People in a place where they don't know anybody at all will often tweak the threshold a bit to strangers that share some standout commonality with them. The opposite happens in an environment with few people. On a lonely road, people start nodding at oncoming traffic or the occasional wanderer, on a very lonely road I've caught myself saying hello to farm animals or wildlife. Lost in the desert I'd probably try to chat up a friendly looking rock. The village is sitting nicely between those extremes.
As a kid in Germany I was taught to greet every person I met on the street. Back then I really really really hated it but now I see it’s a good way to stay in touch with each other.
