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Tons of people listen to podcasts, that's a massive genre. That's probably better than doom-scrolling, although most podcasts are fluff anyway. It's often just entertainment masked as something intellectual.

Other place I can think is in bed before sleep. I would guess that lot of reading happened at that time before too. But ease of smartphones replaced it.

I'll see your 32 James Patterson books and raise you 11 Alastair Reynolds books.

Dan Brown far beats doomscrolling. No idea who Grisham is.

Definitely. It's not like prime literature, but it's good, entertaining reads. I was 12 when I read his books and I got in contact with so many concepts previously unknown. Things about art, the Catholic church, places in Europe, the CERN, the LHC. The first contact I had with the concept of cryptography was reading Digital Fortress. The first time I heard about the NSA was reading Digital Fortress. It definitely expanded my view of the world.