When you are reading a book, you certainly need to use your attention. However, you stay in a given topic/world for a sustained amount of time. This feels very different and much less tiring than scrolling on your phone jumping from topic to topic. Especially social media feeds that have been optimized to keep using it as long as possible (dopamine hits and all).
Newspapers are probably an intermediate between those two, to various degrees depending on the specific newspaper (trash vs deeper analysis).
I think reading is the difference. People didn’t whip out a newspaper when they had less than 30 seconds available. The smartphone has filled these gaps with an infinite amount of content.
Also, community. In a doctors office reading a paper - it is the same thing your neighbor is reading so you can talk about it. With smartphones, this is lost unless there is a pressing global event.
Yes, but you tend to carry around a smartphone all the time and the temptation to whip it out whenever there's more than a 5s window can be very strong.
Arguably, same with books and - even moreso - newspapers. I vaguely remember doomsaying about people only scanning newspaper headlines.
But think about it, a good newspaper has a mix of news, background, entertainment, opinions, adverts, etc - not unlike browsing reddit or twitter, it's a barrage of emotional ups and downs and items asking for your attention in different ways.
With that in mind I don't think the concept of distraction is new.
Newspapers are probably an intermediate between those two, to various degrees depending on the specific newspaper (trash vs deeper analysis).