Even to someone like me, guilty of decrying the evils of smartphones, it’s a shocking headline:

“Vermont bill would ban cellphone use by anyone younger than 21.”

If under-21s aren’t mature enough to smoke, drink, or own a gun, reasons the bill, they shouldn’t own a cellphone, either. They might use one to bully, or text and drive like their elders.

Even its sponsor says the bill makes a political point and is unlikely to pass. But can you imagine? Kids without phones in a society that can’t seem to function anymore without them attached at the wrist.

As was predicted in 1953 (Snopes confirmed).

“There’ll be no escape in future from telephones,” read the Associated Press headline, printed in the Tacoma News Tribune on April 11, 1953. To quote — get this — a phone company executive during the time of rotary-dial telephones on side tables:

“In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will require no dial or equivalent, and I think the users will be able to see each other, if they want, as they talk. Who knows but what it may actually translate from one language to another?” — Mark Sullivan, president of Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., in an April 9, 1953, address.

Decades before computers and handhelds, this guy predicted video calls and Apple watches.

According to a June 12, 2019, Pew Research article, 96 percent of Americans own a cellphone. Eighty-one percent have a smartphone (up from just 35 percent in 2011).

One in five American adults now use phones as their only internet source, meaning no broadband service at home. A June 25, 2019, Pew article reported nearly 30 percent of Americans — and 48 percent of those aged 18-29 — are online “almost constantly” (up from 21 percent in 2015). It’s probably higher now, almost a year later.

Other Pew Research indicates more than two-thirds of Americans admit checking their phones often, when they don’t vibrate or sound. About half check phones in the middle of the night and first thing after waking up.

Is this constant connection an addiction? If the higher rates of depression and anxiety are anything to go by, say psychologists, yes, for many it probably is. It’s not yet in the DSM-V (manual of disorders), but is probably headed there. PsychCentral.com compares cellphone addiction to gambling addiction.

If not exactly predicted by Mr. Sullivan in 1953, the Tacoma News Tribune headline suggests foresight.

It seems we have indeed created that no-escape scenario.

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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network who misses rotary dial and freedom from constant availability. Contact her at Sholeh@cdapress.com.