Common Observation

The story I am about to share has already by experienced and observed by many already. We can either share this experience together or you can just skip this post.

The other day, my roommate and I had a friend over and we were hanging out, chatting, sitting in our living room area. A lull occurred in the conversation and my roommate and I both looked up to see that each of us was engrossed in our smartphones. Claire was looking through pictures, I was online on pinterest and Will was...actually I don't know what Will was doing. But it was on his phone.

Claire was the first to make a comment, something along the lines of, "ha wow instead of talking to each other we're all on our phones". And we all just kind of...laughed. Laughed it off is better to say.
So I can take two things from this: one, it is no longer surprising. To see a bunch of young adults hanging out but interacting with their phones instead of each other and two, that it now a common, given circumstance.
Is this such a bad thing? What would we do during those lulls without our phones? We would still sit quietly. But maybe that develops better conversational skills in people. Forces them into that situation where they have to think of something to talk about or ask. Or perhaps it allows us to be more comfortable with one another. To accept those lulls and be comfortable in comrade-able silence. (Is that a word?).
It's hard to remember back to a time where we didn't have our phone. And I think most authors are correct in saying that our phones have become extensions of ourselves. Marshall McLuhan states this in his article, The Medium is the Message. A good reference for this class if you have any spare reading time on your hands.

This is not a new point, not a new argument, not something unheard of. I would be interested to hear what other people have to say, to see how many people consider this a big deal or not a big deal. A sign of declining social interaction or would be fiddling around with something during this lulls anyhow? Technological or not.