In my last column, I spoke to some of the consequences I see as a result of modern society's growing adoption of “on the run,” attention-deficit lifestyles. In particular, I noted how often you find younger people at the intersection of quickservice dining and social media use these days, eating meals almost unconsciously, focused on mobile tweets or Facebook postings rather than in-person socialization. The meal itself becomes almost an afterthought.

This tendency is certainly having an effect on those who operate foodservices and I suggested that it could have broader implications not only for longer term dining trends but also for other aspects of social interaction.

Just days after I wrote that piece, The New York Times published an op-ed column by Dalton Conley, dean of social sciences at NYU, that echoed some of these concerns.

Titled, “When Roommates Were Random,” it observed that the era is ending in which incoming resident college freshmen typically were assigned roommates randomly. For better or worse, he said, that practice meant roomates often differed in terms of cultural background, income levels and personal tastes, but that these contrasts in freshman year expanded the social experience of higher education.

Instead, Conley wrote, today's students go to “sites like roomsurf.com and roomsynch.com, scoping out prospective friends. By the time roommate application forms arrive, many like-minded students with similar backgrounds have already connected and agreed to request one another.”

This is unfortunate, he said, “especially for college age students, who should be trying on new hats and getting exposed to new and different ideas…It's just one of many ways in which digital technologies now spill over into non-screen-based aspects of social experience.” (www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/when-roommates-were-random.html)