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Buying your child a smartphone seems increasingly unwise as time goes on.

It's a huge catch-22:

You need a smartphone to take part in modern social life. (Yes, adults can choose life without a smartphone or any social media, in reality teenagers can't without being ostracised).

On the other hand using smartphones and social media can also result in stress and comparing your ordinary life to other people's highlights.

What about a smartphone that is locked down? Apps are curated by parents and certain websites blocked.

Also, there are tons of things that have ostracized teenagers in the last. Why do smartphones have such a stranglehold? It seems we are becoming more and more afraid of being different.

It's not "being different" not having a smartphone to keep in contact with your peers is akin to being homeschooled /w no hobbies. You basically have no social circle to speak of.

Without a smartphone and access to the chat app of choice, you'll be left out of a good part of out-of-school socialisation. For example nobody gives out invites to birthdays on cards at class anymore, they do it via WhatsApp and you reply the same way.

Yea, but access to chatting apps isn't necessarily the same as access to social media apps, except maybe Facebook's messaging. Having WhatsApp, text messaging, iMessage, Line, WeChat, etc. doesn't mean you need to install TikTok or Instagram.

That's what we have screen time limits for. You can set the screen time for those apps to 0 minutes.