My school day was from 8AM to 4PM, lunch at 1, post-lunch recess at 1:30. Recesses lasted 30 minutes, with usually 4 per day.
Years of having approximately 2 hours of alone-with-my-thoughts time (as a child to preteen, not an adult), every weekday. Not fun, and to this day I don't feel like it has given me any mental benefit.
I consider myself quite lucky when reading Americans' complaints about their schools and recesses, with sentences such as "bring back recess!". I shudder to think of what goes on in some districts compared to what I had, which was overall quite sufficient and well spaced-out.
The real problem was just me. Or, if I had to put the blame on someone else, it was my parents and the school authorities which didn't really help much. Not out of bad faith or anything, just of simple ignorance or unwillingness to think of it as important enough to warrant the help I actually needed.
And to the other OC's point: not all phone use is bad. Not all "scrolling" is bad. I was quite internet-literate for my age at that time, in which, by the way, the internet wasn't the algorithmic ML doom-driven nightmare it can sometimes be today.
