Warning: this column is a dark path to a gaudy "Great Gatsby" party while children go hungry.

We know the damage cellphones cause to kids and teenagers in learning and mental health epidemics of anxiety and depression. The research results are in.

Private and public schools are banning them. Girls suffer poor self-esteem and body image; boys often themselves isolate indoors playing online video games.

They are not enjoying the innocent pleasures of growing up and going outside to play in the neighborhood.

Limits and curfews on cellphones are hard to enforce, parents say. Artificial intelligence is accused of writing college papers and even assisting young suicides.

But here's the thing.

We adults are also guilty of spending way too much time on our devices. And we expect cellphones to be a leash on our kids, to stay in touch, which enforces a passive dependency.

Earbuds say "no trespassing" in shared spaces as we have silent interactions with total strangers online. Meanwhile, we miss the passing parade of real life all around us.

The other day, while crossing a bridge, I encountered someone who was a presidential political adviser. Wearing sunglasses and earbuds, he walked on by. I didn't have the heart to ask how he's doing these days.

Texting is a national pastime that gets straight to the point. Yet the fine art of conversation gets lost along the way.

A telephone call is so much more — in tone of voice, state of mind and life events. Thanks, Alexander Graham Bell, for the invention and a century of connecting us. Love you.

But now I think twice before I call even my best friends. My family called cross-country every day during the pandemic, saving me from despair.

The pandemic and its Zoom rooms hardened national habits, right? Stuck alone in front of screens, a generation of children never learned proper social skills. They wince at the memory of seventh grade.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says it's rude when people check their phones at meetings, a violation of business etiquette.

Without our eyes and ears engaged in casual contact and chance meetings in public — call it small talk — do I dare suggest that the town square of old has virtually vanished?

No wonder so many meet a match on dating sites.

The point is that we're all stuck in the (anti)social media web, me included.

Ersatz conversations in the ether are thin gruel. I get my fair share of abuse from people who would probably be nicer in person.

In some cases, we don't know our colleagues, often spread geographically apart in the 21st century workplace.

I have nearly 2,000 new and old friends on Facebook — and I like them dearly. We follow each other's families, birthdays, thoughts, opinions, pets, even dinners. But it doesn't fill you up.

I think various platforms may strengthen weak connections and weaken strong connections.

A "Gen Z" campus movement to turn off all digital media for one hour to socialize face-to-face with others has just begun, The New York Times reported.

The RECONNECT movement is progress.

A leading English novelist, Ian McEwan, gives advice for deep writing and thinking that makes sense.

In a word, it's solitude: peace and quiet every day for several hours, detaching from chatter online. Yes, alone with our own thoughts without distraction, like a Robert Frost poem.

Try it sometime. Concentration does not come as easily anymore.

We live by the idea that we're all in a vast village somehow, and we can find out almost anything from Google. But the internet is a false god in the political arena.

Finally, we flash to a Mar-a-Lago "Great Gatsby" party dancing while the government is dark.

There's only one president who would dare flaunt that he is one of author F. Scott Fitzgerald's "careless people."

For a decade, he campaigned and communicated with nasty, short and brutish messages online. He broke every rule in the book on civics, civility and the Constitution.

That president used that medium to destroy our democracy day by day. One man, one tweet. And that is not a coincidence.

They go hand in hand, the man and the medium.

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

Photo credit: Sergey Zolkin at Unsplash