Dear Avram,
One thousand percent the void was already there. But the hanhala was told by the technology experts that it is all because of the phone. And they became conditioned to only see the phone issue and not the real issue. It got so bad, that these boys couldn’t ask for help. Some of them even knew that the phone was stopping them from worse things. It was like the biggest mitzva to get the phones out of yeshiva. Even if it killed a whole winter zman and half a dozen bachurim. Thankfully, most of that hanhala is no longer in chinuch.