> Electronic communication allows you to communicate with the specialist in your field
Which makes it less likely you will communicate with someone closer to your level. The specialist will be inundated, whereas perfectly fruitful conversations with merely competent/slightly expert people will not happen. You are a lot more likely to know the famous experts than you are to know very good people in the field who are right in your (or any) backyard. A dense network of communications will likely generate better ideas than those centered around very few specialists.
> It is constantly available thanks to smartphones.
Time sink spent on sites like the Math stackexchange, etc at all possible hours. With a coffee house, you have a dedicated time, and you cannot utilize it outside of those few hours. This frees up your mind to ponder and create. With "constantly available", you can spend all your time on it.
> If you have a great idea, you can share it immediately,
This is a huge problem for two reasons: 1. It leads to way too many false positives. I reckon most such ideas are flawed, and you would have discovered the flaws if you had waited a few hours/days to share it. 2. Spending the time to curate your idea, formulate it well, etc is much more effective than simply messaging out your half baked idea (even if the idea is a good one).
> You can ask question and get answer within seconds when you are working on your subject.
This is the same anti-feature and is why when I worked in teams where we were colocated, I would keep my IM off at work (sometimes for months at a time). If people wanted to talk to me, they could email me if it's not urgent otherwise they would have to walk to my cube and interrupt me (I don't mind these interruptions). This worked well for 2 reasons: 1. They are much more conscious of interrupting me, so they will think more before deciding to interrupt me. 2: Just that extra physical motion of getting up and walking would be enough for their brains to figure out the solution on the way to my cube.
You could very well argue that some people have the discipline and skills to manage all the problems above. In my experience, they are in a minority, and a smaller proportion of the population can/will manage them compared to the old days.
> But they are now able to take advantage of both electronic and face-to-face communication with a level of expertise older generations don't have, and better manage potential distractions.
Very much disagree on "better manage potential distractions." We have an order of magnitude more distractions, and looking around I see that most people are doing a very poor job of managing them.
Pandemic aside, our "newest adult generation" still can meet in real life. But they are now able to take advantage of both electronic and face-to-face communication with a level of expertise older generations don't have, and better manage potential distractions.
I don't worry about them, not on that subject anyways. They are perfectly able to understand the beauties in life, like every human did since humans existed. It is just that times change and people adapt.