Video games weren't as widespread, personalized, or diverse than they are now. That people who played video games in 2010 said that those were better is immaterial. This graph goes up through 2022: https://i.redd.it/tnrs4wl1ibkb1.png

Same with smartphones. Smartphone apps existed but weren't as personalized and didn't serve nearly as diverse of content as they do now. It's night and day. Surely I don't need to pull up a graph of smartphone usage per day.

The data shows the big drop in sex happened in the 2010's. Your graph shows the big spike in gaming happened 2021 & 2022. That's during the pandemic. Of course gaming rose during the pandemic when people were forced to stay home.

Find the graph for "hours spent on social media" and I bet you will have found your culprit.

No one means a BlackBerry when they say smartphones. It implies a large screen that can consume content easily, and with a large data plan, neither of which existed until The iPhone. I never saw someone watch 2 hours of YouTube on a blackberry.

Please, this is HN. Don't make moot points. Smartphones existed before 2010, but few people had them.

When I say “smarphone” I mean iphone and later.