I'd much rather be surrounded by people wearing earbuds than have people watching tiktoks through their phone speakers on the subway
Coincidentally, the latter increases the number of the former. Most people are going to avoid confrontation and instead opt for their personal noise cancelation.
There is an even worse thing. Using speakerphone while on street, while holding the phone near ear anyway.
those are just people with bad manners.
That just sounds like another version of what the author is talking about: using [device] to avoid human interaction.