Do you answer your cellphone during sex?

Some people do. Fortune's David Kirkpatrick shares some surprising facts, worrisome behavior and huge growth opportunities in 'The Mobile Generation.'

By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- People are becoming increasingly dependent on their cellphones. According to Dan Schulman, CEO of cell operator Virgin Mobile, one in five will interrupt sex to answer their phone.

That was just one surprising insight from an intense 25-person seminar on "The Mobile Generation" at the Aspen Institute in August, with Schulman and other top thinkers.

Much of the discussion focused on how quickly young people worldwide are migrating to mobile communications and integrating them into their lives.

"People leave a movie and text each other, and then text each other again before they go to sleep," said Jerry Murdock, a venture capitalist with Insight Venture Partners. "This is something new - maintaining an ongoing dialogue with someone wherever you are." He says we are entering an era of what he calls "co-presence."

"I know a 32-year-old whose boyfriend used SMS to break up with her," recounted John Seely Brown, the emeritus director of Xerox PARC. Responded the other Brown in the room - Shona (no relation) - who is senior vice president for business operations at Google (Charts): "For the record, that's tacky."

There was much discussion about mobile applications of the future. For instance, said Shona Brown: "Someone will pay for pizza with a cellphone, and their friend will use [phone-to-phone] infrared to top off the others' stored value card."...for more of the story