Even better is at 2:04. Even after tripping over the bread trays, he never breaks eye contact.
Blackberry’s were taking Bay Street by storm by 2000.
Hey all, thanks for all the answers! 
I did think of putting this in IMHO. The mods can certainly move it if their wisdom prompts them to do so. 
But I actually am trying to get at factual answers, which are unavoidably going to be based on people’s perceptions of what was happening in different places at different times. I think we’re getting close to it-- 2011 sounds kind of right. Remember that we’re not talking about when the cool kids did it, or when you might see everyone in Generic Hipster Location walking around staring at the phone, but when a critical mass was reached, when you would see the average person in the average situation doing this a lot of the time. When Average Mom and Standard Dad (probably not Grandma, though) were staring at their phones in Starbucks. More ideas definitely welcome.
To add to the chorus, people I knew began to have smartphones in 2007. The novelty of being able to stop mid-conversation to fact-check what your friends just said was irresistible (and damned annoying for the friends). That was before there were lots of games and social media apps, as I recall; it was all about checking Wikipedia.
ETA: Twitter was around before 2011, but it was in 2011/2012 that they got the bugs in the system worked out so you didn’t see the netted whale half the time you tried to load it. Therefore I’d guess that 2012 saw a huge increase in the number of people staring at phones in public. (I was home with a baby at the time and had no desire to get out much, so I don’t know for sure).
Probably right after they stopped staring at their magazines, newspapers, and televisions all the time. Restaurants had TVs, waiting rooms had magazines, buses and cafes had newsstands. You act like people staring at text and pictures in public is a new thing. As a survivor of the 20th century, I assure you it is not.
Someone once asked me, “Before cell phones, did you carry a book around with you everywhere and start reading it whenever you had a few spare minutes to kill?” Why, yes, in fact, I did. I wasn’t the only one either. On the rare occasions when I didn’t have a book, magazine or paper near me, I’d start reading cereal boxes and jelly jars or distant billboards and the t-shirts of passersby. Anything my little eyes could extract meaning from, really.
Sure, there were extroverts who instead would strike up a conversation with strangers in public whenever they had a few spare minutes. There still are. I guess I’m just not seeing the big difference. We now carry small black infotainment rectangles that have taken the place of the larger, floppier, less information-dense infotainment rectangles we used to carry.
The question was when did everyone start staring at their phones. That only happened when smartphones became commonplace. When flip phones were the rage people only took them out when they were using them.
I’d say it predates iphones. Texting became really popular in 1999-2000 and it wasn’t uncommon to see people face down in their flip phones texting away like crazy.
John McWhorter, in Doing our Own Thing (2003), describes the then-new phenomenon of people TALKING on their cell phones while waiting for the bus, etc. – moments that, until then, were typically filled by reading a magazine or just sitting and people-watching. (as Dr. Cube mentioned).
He didn’t mention people looking down and texting, though, and he was pretty hip to trends. So, I’m guessing that cell phone texting hadn’t hit a “critical mass” quite yet. More like 2005 or so, about five years before smart phones hit “critical mass.”
Hawaiians have taken a bold step to address the problem.
For me personally, around 2013 when I got a smartphone. Before that (due to financial constraints and not being interested) I had a 2G phone.
I had various 2G phones from 2004-2012. It was only after I got a smartphone in 2013 that I spent all day staring at it.
How I Met Your Mother pegged it as between 2005 and 2011 (when the episode was made): https://youtu.be/BAACDTM-Bwc
Seriously, I would like someone to explain to me the attraction of texting. My family had a black telephone on a table in the living room. We could talk to other people on it. We would have thought anyone was nuts if they sent us a telegram instead of calling us on the phone. Now, people seem to prefer to communicate by digital telegrams.
I don’t think that you are right.
No doubt people texted a lot, and people stared at their phones while doing so. But for the average person there is only so much texting that you can do. Smartphones, where FaceBook, message boards and the internet in general can suck you in takes it to a completely different level. If I look at the parents at my kid’s Cub Scout meeting 9 out of 10 of them are reading their smartphones at any one time. You can see a similar phenomenon looking over crowds in restaurants, etc. all the time. I don’t think that was true in the text age.
People can’t gab on forever with text. The form really pushes conciseness. Introvert paradise.
Now, why *extroverts *might want to have an extensive text conversation that lasts half an hour, I have NFI.
Howard Rheingold wrote about how he first noticed texting on the streets of Tokyo in 2000, and the term “thumb tribes” to describe Tokyo youth came into use around 2002. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the phenomenon the OP is describing happened in Japan first and spread from there, plus weren’t Japanese phones consistently one step ahead of whatever we had in the West?
Basically, when they became smartphones that could deliver an almost unlimited array of media and games right to your hand.
A lot of what goes on in public is people waiting, and when people are waiting for something they want to amuse themselves. Reading for example. Whereas I used to always need to have a physical book with me in case I got stuck in some kind of waiting-for-something-and-I’m-by-myself situation, I now have ebooks and audiobooks on my phone. And I always have the phone with me anyway. Besides providing access to books and other media, a smartphone is more or less an adult busybox with all kinds of puzzles, games, and other diversions to download. I favor chess puzzles, crosswords in English or German, and a cool maze app among other things.
And before that, if anyone used a mobile phone while standing next to a pay phone, everyone thought they were just trying to show what a bigshot they were, because mobile carriers charged by the call and the calls were much more expensive than using a pay phone.
I was living in Korea in 2011-13 and smartphones were absolutely ubiquitous, on the subway in Seoul it was unusual when people *weren’t *looking at theirs. In Hong Kong, in late 2006 on the subway, I saw some people using touchscreens, but most were still reading newspapers/staring out the window.
Yes! And I support this law wholeheartedly. I know a lady (not the wife) who got popped downtown for that. She was pissed off. My lack of sympathy may have shown through and made it worse.
I’m in the minority. I use my phone only as a phone, and I’m perfectly able to ignore it when it’s ringing.
The driver who hit me was backing up while texting about the price of oranges at Shop Rite. Her excuse? “I wasn’t going that fast.”
A friend was hit by a texting driver who ran a red light while she was in the crosswalk. His excuse? “It was her fault. She wasn’t watching where she was going.” She was crossing on the green light in the crosswalk.