There is a recent paper that's been in the news a bit, from Thomas Gernon, a Prof. at Southampton, et al, which accounts for why there are uplifted plateaux several hundred km from the coast in a number of places, e.g. S Africa, Brazil, India. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07717-1
It's quite technical, but as I understand it, they propose, via modelling, that after rifting to form a new ocean, an unstable vortex of convection is set up in the asthenosphere due to something called Rayleigh-Taylor instability (a thing in fluid dynamics, apparently). This vortex moves away from the mid-ocean ridge under the continent and progressively delaminates the "keel" of lithosphere at the base of the tectonic plate.
I gather the rigid upper mantle which forms the lower part of the lithosphere is actually denser than the asthenosphere it sits above (it is rigid because it has cooled, which also makes it denser), so tearing (or melting?) off this "keel" actually causes the lithosphere to tend to rise, isostatically. The delaminated material, plus the heat in the ascending side of the vortex can cause a breakthrough of volcanism, creating the Kimberlite pipes that are a curious feature in some of these places. The vortex makes its way under the continent over a period of several tens of millions of years, so these features start to arise quite a long time after the ocean opening event.
I don't pretend I know a great deal about this subject but I thought it was interesting. I had not realised that our understanding of the lithosphere has moved on so much, and that tectonic plates are now thought to comprise not just crust but a substantial chunk of cooling, solid mantle beneath as well. As it cools, the density increases and eventually the whole thing becomes unstable, due to "floating" on asthenosphere that is less dense than it has become - which is a driver for subduction.