For a lot of young people the screen is social - the equivalent of the long after-school phonecalls from the before times. Be it games or just Discord, it's still comms.

The screen is also a continual, addictive flow of short video clips that are largely designed to sell product, stoke FOMO, make people feel inadequate about beauty, etc.

Observe young people using their phones, and you can see the social use is often just occasionally switching from TikTok to a chat app, dashing off a one-line message, and then going right back to TikTok. Big difference from having actual long phone conversations with friends after school.

Most of the social of screens is when you get to a place without them you have something common to talk about. "how about [local sports team]", "what did you think about [whatever happened on latest soap opera]", "lets pretend I'm [some character on cartoon]". It is all shorthand for we have something in common and can skip getting to know each other.