How do you watch movies (rant warning)?

I'm tagging this as soapbox, cause this is really just an "old man yells at cloud" rant in the end.

Firstly, I really like the theater experience for horror movies because I am so desensitized, that having a crowd react around me is really fun. For examples, people freaking out over just about everything in The Substance really added to that experience. On the opposite end of the spectrum, seeing multiple couples walking out of Skinamarink.

But, how do you watch horror movies at home?

Unless the movie is a really slow burn or I can tell it's in a down shift moment, my phone is face down. But, I would say a good amount of people I know aren't looking at the movie half the time, dual screening their experience. On their phone, playing a game on PC, etc.

This is really frustrating to me because they are missing half the movie and experience, IMO. Maybe I'm wrong, but how can you experience a sense of dread and whatnot if you are scrolling through memes, clicking your mobile game, or murdering people in your FPS of choice?

I understand every opinion is subjective, people will like or hate things for one reason or another. But there's this "old man" part of me that will see someone's opinion and then this voice inside of me asks, "How much of this movie did this person actually watch and absorb? Were they actually invested or were they just looking up when a loud noise happened?"

It's honestly becoming really hard to take an opinion seriously for me unless they watched it in the theater, because who the heck knows what they were doing while watching the movie.

Gentle ribbing, I really wish I could have looked at my phone a couple times during Skinamarink. No real hate to y'all that love it.

Sidenote, there are multiple studies and tests that show people wildly overestimate how good they are at multitasking.

Thanks for reading my rant. Sorry to everyone that will downvote me, ignore the unplugged ancient one.

TL;DR: I think being on your phone ruins the experience of a lot of movies.