I thought of this the other day. I was on the train ride back from Chicago, and there was a family of four adults, sitting across from me, all just staring at their phones. I was effectively alone at that point in time. None of them were present. But you explained it in a new way I had not thought of before. They're quite literally not there in that moment, for however long that moment lasts.
I heard the unofficial motto for BlackBerry from friends, something along the lines of "make distant friends be nearby, and nearby friends distant"
I took the train from Seattle to Portland last fall. Half of the people in the observation car were on Nintendo Switches the entire time. In the observation car.