I think there's a selection bias here; the ones who are performative are more likely to cross paths with a NYTimes journalist than the ones who aren't. People who keep it low key don't often rise to the notice of others.
But I'm mostly seeing a single school, so it may just be that that school operates in some kind of techphobic bubble, not that the better-off are generally exposing their kids to cell phones and the Internet way less than the middle-class and lower.
... then again, maybe what I'm seeing isn't a heavily biased sample, and that's exactly what's going on, and this article is a manifestation of a real tendency of the upper classes to curtail tech exposure for their kids, compared with the general population.
This is not a story of consequence but it does speak to an important issue of our day. It's not as though this is the only kind of reporting NY Times does.
That's not at all what happened. There were rumors that tech reporting should be critical[1], instead of gushing and repeating claims from press releases without actually investigating. Real journalism is critical, and critical doesn't mean "bad" or "negative".