I observe this everywhere. Yesterday when i was driving to the supermarket, i had to stop at a red light to let people cross the road. The mother was pushing a pram with one hand, was texting on her phone with the other hand, and behind her a 2 or 3 year old toddler just following. So this crossing is on a really busy 4 way junction, the mother reaches the other side and the toddler is still in the middle of the road shes just dancing to her self, the lights have turned green, one or two cars beeped at the same time which caught the attention of the mother who then panicked and called the toddler to her.

I could not believe it, whilst crossing an extremely busy section of the road she had her phone in her hand and not the hand of a toddler, this was not an older child who you would expect to have been taught how to cross a road safely.

When i was working in a restaurant, i would see parents often asking if they could have some nibbles before the meal came out to occupy the 'naughty' child. But what i saw was one or both parents on their phone the whole time, and the child would start misbehaving to get their attention, but they would just give them more distractions. Not everyone is like this obviously, but once you've seen it, you notice it absolutely everywhere, it's so shocking, we consider or selves to be intelligent beings, but we're not, we're quite stupid in someways when we can't even listen to our natural instincts anymore.