Thinking about this, I realize that all of my laptops fall into four categories: (1) MacBooks ——these are made of metal and are quite rigid and strong, (2) large screened Dells, too heavy to pick up comfortably with one hand, (3) Lenovo Thinkpads that are thin but very lightweight, and (4) a couple of Chromebooks that sit permanently on a desk for web use only and don’t get picked up. In all of these cases, there is little danger that I will injure them by handling them as you’ve described.
I start thinking about my collection of laptops and amended my comment above.
I disagree with this completely. I can pick a reasonable sized mirror up by the edge, and it has a chance of breaking. I can pick a table up by one of four legs, but it puts stress on the connections. I can pick lots of things up in ways that would do damage to them. And the people that made them _could_ make them stronger to avoid that, at the cost of a higher price. Or they could not spend the money and just say "don't pick it up in a way that puts unreasonable stress on it". It is a compromise and, for many items, there is a point beyond which it's not worth spending more money on it.
It's almost hard to imagine how many laptops break in that exact same stop near the top center of the screen from being picked up like that.
I understand the theory, but I think significantly more laptops are broken by e.g. squishing them against a non-flat object in a bag, or dropping.
Think of a modern tablet. Would you seriously say one must not hold a tablet by an edge?
(Me personally, I destroy all my laptop hardware by spilled drinks...)
Back when day trading was a thing and Starbucks was packed with people on laptops, I used to see people pick up their computers by the top of the screen all the time. I never understood that.