yet will sit and tolerate alcohol tearing apart families.

When I was 15/16, I went to parties with different groups. There were the grunge people drinking, and then there were the skater people smoking weed. The drinking parties always had issues, the weed parties always had good conversation and shilling out. I did neither.

but long before cell phones, twitter and xboxes, we had addicts.

Yes. It is in our DNA, and the phones just leverage it and make it socially acceptable to "drink" everywhere openly.