Maybe that's a problem in of itself?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
There is nothing intrinsically different about computing from, say, 10 years ago. You might still want to read some text on a webpage, click on a few buttons and have them do something, maybe fill out some text fields, or even upload/download a few files.
Instead, you get "visual experiences" with overcomplicated UIs with similarly overcomplicated underlying technologies (edit: not to say that there aren't benefits to technologies like Vue/Angular/React, however they aren't "necessary" to get things done most of the time, in many cases even server side rendering without JS would be enough), all of which waste all of the resources that you'll give them, especially if you don't have ad-blockers on which means that you'd get bogged down with dozens if not hundreds of malicious scripts.
Of course, this is a bit akin to shouting at the cloud, but nobody should be too proud about the state the modern web is in and use it to justify wasteful hardware and software requirements: https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
Even "garbage" arm CPUs are fine these days. All my real work happens when I remote into a machine that's faster than a $3500 workstation laptop. The remaining heavy workload is the web browser (and, perhaps, corporate email client / other crapware)
I agree, but do consider how many Chromebooks are purchased by schools. The calculus there might be different, because kids drop things.
Note that ethically, I'm not convinced this need outweighs the environmental concerns.
It's honestly a garbage chip for disposable devices, which is just bad for everything.
I'd rather use one $300 device than 3x $100 devices over the same timespan.