Isn’t “but everyone else has one” the appeal kids make to their parents about most everything? (I know I was guilty of that as a kid myself)
Why is this a new level of “denying them a social life”?
If you don't give them a smartphone, and all their peers use their phones to communicate, as well as talk about TikTok videos, your kid will be excluded from all that. If that's where the majority of interaction takes place, then yes, it does deny them a social life.
Many kids need access to group messaging to even be told that there's something going on at foo's house at 6.
What are we really trying to stop here? Are we really just trying to stop all the addicting apps? if so.. maybe we should be focusing on that at a higher level.