In my day there were five popular yeshivos for the Modern Orthodox crowd - Hakotel, BMT [alav hashalom], KBY, Gush and Shaalvim.
The former two were in Yerushalayim which enabled the students if they so desired to go to the hotels [to make sure the pool was separate swimming and that the hechsher was up to par], to Ben Yehuda Street [ostensibly to improve their Hebrew], restaurants [to practice the new hilchos brachos they learned] etc. etc. Yerushalayim is filled [for better and for worse] with diversions [not to mention most of the girl's schools - not that boys spoke to the girls...].
But the latter three were "out there". I remember meeting the boys from those yeshivos on the weekends. Sometimes, they told me, they would be in yeshiva for WEEKS on end just learning, learning and learning, totally detached from the outside world. Today we lost that. Those little devices the boys carry around allows them to be in yeshiva and in a thousand other places at the same time.
When I was in my first two years of yeshiva, we had one phone for the entire student body [!!]. I would go over to the NEXT TOWN once a week and stand at a public phone on the sidewalk and call my parents.
The Torah was given in a מדבר - a DESERT. That, emphasized Moreinu Rosh Hayeshiva Maran Ha-Rav Hutner ztz"l, is where Torah must be received. In a desert free of ALL DISTRACTIONS. No smartphones, newspapers and everything else that takes one's mind off the task at hand - Kabolas Ha-Torah.
