It's the tools. Friction and barriers aren't bad things. When you have a CD player, there's a higher barrier to switching from "listening to music" to "doing something else."

It's something I noticed in myself when I switched from streaming services to a curated local library. I actually listen to entire albums and savor them instead of jumping around from one infinite content firehose to another. Streaming is convenient, but the friction of maintaining a local library makes it meaningful.