Are we de-evolving as human beings?

i have read both Brave New World and 1984. i have also written papers about how the governments in those two societies use pain and hatred vs. happiness and superficial love to control the minds of their population. Though, i have never written a paper about the parallel to our own society. i believe, as Niel Postman and Aldous Huxley do as well, that our society is very much a parallel to that of Brave New World - controlled by technology and manmade inventions and tools to keep everyone filled. just the other night i was out to dinner with a bunch of girls - and i had this moment when i looked at the table and 9 out of the 10 girls had their phone out at the table and were texting someone else in the world. meanwhile, they are all talking and carrying on with their conversation with eachother, but i doubt what they were talking about held very much depth or meaning. i was just at the mall, and i was looking around to see that about half the people in my sight were on cell phones. i dont think cell phones are bad, but the concept of holding a device to your ear talking to someone far away while you are away, conciously distracting yourself from where you actually are and your life in that very moment is pretty interesting. at a click of a button, you are talking to someone in colorado. a click on the television, and you are given a hundred images and briefly updated about the new genocide in Africa. where is the work? it seems that a sense of depth and meaning and thought is slowly being drifted from our world in my opinion. rarely do people sit down and write with their own personal handwriting, their own personal style, and write words to a friend. rarely to people sit down and read or think about what is going in Darfur - only images. rarely is our society challenged anymore. everything is at a click of a button, and immediately a human being's natural emptiness can temporarily be filled. and i am guilty of this as well considering i am attached to my cell phone and i love texting and constantly being entertained or filled up by my phones activity. i feel naked without my phone around me. shouldnt i be okay without any technology like that? that's how it was in the past - where men and women could just walk around, go in nature, go fishing - without any connection to the world besides locally or through words and letters. i believe there is much more thought and depth in that sort of lifestyle. it requires patience and self-control. it requires the patience to sit and learn as well, to understand. so yes, i do think that we are de-evolving as human beings.