I don't have the comparison but before covid people were doing all kind of stuff on their laptops in university. I remember a guy who watched star trek during a lecture and said "the lecture is being recorded, I can watch it later". Then he watched that lecture during a lecture that wasn't recorded.

My fiance is a professor and things I've heard about the last few years blow my mind. It's not so much what they are doing exactly, but how shocked and offended they get if she asks them to stop.

Or adults!

I used to teach massage at a vocational school, and for multiple reasons had a "no phones" policy on the classroom (distraction, exposed body parts, and others.) I could have ignored it during lectures except that the overlap of students on their phone and the ones asking to re-explain information or just lost as to what they're supposed to be doing was nearly perfect.

I truly don't understand the college students who are paying insane tuition to be there to get a degree and they couldn't care less. I don't know if their parents are forcing them to go to college or what.

As a software dev, this has always been a thing in the industry. Very rarely is our attention needed, and we are mostly there to fill seats and answer a handful of questions.

Sometimes our full attention is needed, but we generally know about those beforehand. For the rest, we continue to test, write code, answer communications, etc.