I believe phones and social media are why so many movies, media, fiction just seems generally worse now. Humans make lots of connections when their minds wander. Stanley Kubrick came up with the match cut in 2001 (the bone cutting to the satellite) playing around with a broom in between shots. When absent external stimuli, human brains explore the latent space around us, with constant external stimuli, we devote cognitive resources to managing and understanding the influx of information.