Young men spend about an 2 hours on games per day, and the numbers for young women is much lower. Young women however spend about 2 hours more on their phones per day more than men. Something seems very similar here if we look at the two activities together rather then in isolation.
I would instead ask what gendered benefit men get from gaming, and women from doing social activities on their phones, and I would guess the answer has something to do with inter-gender competition and status.
And simply socialization. Gaming is socialization for many male gamers - it is their primary or only social circle and friends. It is the main thing they talk about even in person (what tv used to be).
What does "on their phones" mean? This is like saying they spend time "reading books." There are good books and bad books. There are edifying and educational books and pulpy trash books. Just saying "books" says nothing about the productivity.
But what can you expect from a clearly biased news source that, while possibly not wrong, is likely not going to give any benefit of the doubt to people who live life differently from the "good 'ol christian boy" fashion.
What happens as this continues to decline?
Maybe culturally getting married is incredibly more time consuming and difficult than it used to be? I mean I'm reading George Orwell's Burmese days and the main character was trying to propose (and the girl wanted him to) within 2 weeks of knowing eachother! Granted it's a book, but that doesn't sound outside the realms of normalcy, especially in Burma during the 1920's where there were like 1/1000 ratio of white person to native.
There were consequences for that through - partner who hate each other, violence, abuse (verbal, emotional, physical). Alcoholism.
Yeah, the people who pine for the "good old days" when people married for life always leave this part out.