I linked to this thread, only because it's what got me thinking about this topic again. Me and my SO talk about phones occasionally, regarding our kids. Neither of them are anywhere close to an age where they might have one. However, as time goes on, we find ourselves so repelled by the idea of the kids having a fully fledged smartphone.
Given the reality that all social media apps are effectively skinner boxes, training you to use them more, the idea of allowing kids on them feels like offering a 10-year-old a cigarette. I have to remind myself that the internet I grew up on is dead and gone. I may have been exposed to some weird ass shit in AOL chat rooms, but there wasn't any kind of algorithmic content feed keeping me itching and scratching.
So far, the only time the oldest uses an iPad is when they use mine, and the only apps they use are Procreate for drawing, and an app that helps kids learn to write letters and words. Watching TV is probably the worst thing we get into at home when it comes to just pure content consumption, but we keep the list of watchable stuff pretty small, and regularly axe shows we feel don't meet our standards when we venture off that list.
I guess this has evolved into a larger discussion about media consumption as I have typed this out, but at the end of the day, that's what's happening on these phones, right?
I'm giving it a strong no, and I made my case in a response to another comment in this thread but the risks are too high and the benefits too small. It's simply not worth it imo.
Teach your kids how to entertain themselves and to deal with boredom in creative ways. Expand their horizons. Don't condemn them to a life of overconsumption of social media.
Phones are necessary for more than just alleviating boredom. Not only are they necessary as phones with all that entails and implies, they are necessary as ways to interact with institutions and authority figures, and they have useful tools like GPS and cameras that a child might want or need.
There are other options than a smartphone for these things and if it was an absolute necessity then OP wouldn't have made a post asking about it in the first place - people don't make similar posts asking if children need shoes because it's taken for granted that they are a necessity.
There really aren't other options than a phone for doing phone stuff. And people do make parenting posts about shoes and the moral compromise involved. This is a very non-parent post.