Our school assigns every kid an iPad. In Kindergarten. Good idea? I kinda don't think so, though it's been useful this year, of course. But it happens.

Increasingly parents have trouble letting kids wander the neighborhood on their own without a tracker/communication-device on them, and a smartphone's really good at serving that role. There are other options but kids want to have their smartphone on them, and as soon as you want them to be able to do one other smartphone-thing any other option starts to look kinda pointless.

(just relating observations of parenting in the wild, not my own parenting approach)

I question the validity of presuming this question has a correct answer for all parents under all circumstances.

Not your kids. Not your business.