Actually, cellphones are pretty dumb computers.

So, rather than saying that cells make people dumb, maybe overcomplacent might be a better term?

We are heading at the same point. We are just taking different paths. You mention group think amoung kids. Taking away thier phones and thier musics and all the trappings of that life puts them off balance. Even the symbolic isolation can be powerful. I've found when I have I have to deal with kids, if you can get them outside of thier comfort zone, just a little, they are more likely to learn and think for themselves.

And if they panic a hair at the idea of being behind the ultimate firewall, good. It has made the simulation more realistic, and more memorable. If they think "well, worst comes to worse, there is the phone", they will stop when thier hands get sore while using the hand drill to make fire. Take the illusion of safety away, and you'll eventually get smoke, if not a spark, out of that drill.

Without the crutch, they've got two choices: learn how to be comfortable or be miserable. People like being comfortable. I won't force them to learn. But if they choose to come over on thier own, with the understanding that price of ending your misery is learning how to get yourself out of this situation, they will remember it longer, in my opinion. Just like I won't make them eat, but when they get hungry, they'll catch some grasshoppers like the others did and ask me what needs to be done before they eat them. And I'll explain to them about pulling the heads off, and the discription of a tapeworm will out squimish thier reluctance to basically turn Jimminy Cricket inside out. And reduce thier appitite, so the grasshopers are more filling.

Yes, I learned to swim by being thrown off a dock into a pond. And no, this has nothing to do with why no one asks me to babysit. That has to do with me considering "Enter Sandman" a lullaby.