Maybe this is a hot take. However, a lot of the Chromebooks that were deployed by schools during covid are build like tanks while being super lightweight and having great battery life. Meanwhile the old thinkpads are 10 years old and are probably starting to wear down. Many Chromebooks support coreboot these days so theoretically they have the potential to be more private and secure. Some of them are also arm which means that they are more efficient from an architecture perspective.
Edit:
I like how incredibly controversial this is. I have successfully split the votes
As others have mentioned, perhaps while the metaphor is weak, your spirit is strong!
My kid’s Chromebooks (I purchased for them before the school provided) reached EOL before they finished elementary school.
I installed Linux (Gentoo) so we could continue using them. When power is correctly configured, they were very cool to use as a quick tool to search for something, answer an email, write a quick document and other simple tasks. They did not work well as workstations as an old Thinkpad might.
Since they are so light, and the battery lasted forever, we would leave them on a counter, and pick them up as needed.