Streaming TV shows means I can watch them at a convenient time for me, pausing at leisure, not having to waste time on adverts. In practice this means my wife and I can work through series 45 minutes a night, perhaps only one or two nights a week at whatever time it happens to be after kids are down.
Smartphones can be used in unhealthy ways for sure, but they are almost unreal when you consider how things have changed in the last few decades (looking at my own time):
90s: Shared house lines were the norm, long distance calls expensive-ish, international definitely.
Early 2000s: Personal cellphones pretty common.
Mid 2000s: Home VoIP becoming accessible through Skype, but not mainstream, generally requires a full PC, inconvenient, either for computer enthusiasts or family wanting to do free overseas calls. You would have to hope or arrange other person to be online with Skype at the same time.
Late 2000s: Smartphones are a thing, voip from your pocket is finally accessible, not everyone has smartphones yet, but you can use Skype credit to call anyone in the world at a reasonable cost.
Mid 2010s: smartphones are pretty much ubiquitous, FaceTime (and later equivalent on WhatsApp) mean that you can now talk to almost anyone with very high quality video anywhere in the world basically for free.
What does this mean for me? I regularly FaceTime my parents completely casually with my young children, sometimes just before sleep or in the afternoon or whenever, no ceremony or hassle.
My wife’s sister moved to New Zealand (we live in South Africa) 7 years ago and they FaceTime more than once a week on average with nieces and nephews.
I lived in Europe from 2006 to 2012, and I wish I had in 2006 what I have now in smartphones, maps for most everywhere always available), translation tools always available.
Having experienced the advent of cellphones in my lifetime, they are almost unbelievable to someone who grew up with the full sized PCs which were a lot less capable than a device which now fits in my hand.
