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?
Also, please for the love of god (Hermes, Ogma, Hephasteus, Loki) don't be a Mac household. Google equipment sucks but there's at least things like f-droid that let you break out of the beautiful prison. Apple equipment is designed as an easy to use toy that traps people in the ecosystem and keeps them pliable and ignorant. Everything is soft and round so people can use it without ever having to learn how it works. It creates consumers, not users.
Computers are machines, tools that should be bent to the cause of easing the burden of labor. Get your kids going on a pc, on windows or linux if you can hack it. Give them shit that's badly designed with terrible ux so they have to learn how to take it apart, defeat it, break it in to a more pleasing shape. Apple products, android, game consoles, they're all lotus eater machines designed to be effortless to use so the users never have a chance to escape. Again, throw your kids in to the deserts of Arrakis, make them fight windows to get their shit working, teach them to assemble computers so they see them as a machine made of parts that can be manipulated and controlled. Don't fall for the smooth blobject that offers no resistance.