Even before screens, some people talked on the phone compulsively, some played chess compulsively, some sat in their basement building things out of legos compulsively. Now it's possible to do all those things via a single screen. When looked at in this way, a screen is basically just a tool that takes on the form of many different physical objects rather than something nefarious.

Or, if they weren't reading, they'd flip on the TV and watch whatever was on for four hours, then brush their teeth, then Johnny Carson in bed. It's not like the average American was spending their evening sculpting before the internet.