Well, I grew up before smart phones were a thing, but dumb phones were absolutely a thing (the “cool” kids had the Motorola Razer, if that helps).

And yeah, not having a phone sucked. But I was able to bum a phone off my friends, and I carried some coins in case I needed to use a pay phone (another hint at my age).

Pay phones aren’t really a thing anymore, but kids can absolutely ask a trusted adult (e.g. a teacher) to use their phone in an emergency. My kids also know our phone numbers, our address, and rough directions to get home, so if there’s a true emergency, they can get home (e.g. get a police officer to give them a lift). We ride bikes in our neighborhood frequently enough that they can probably give turn by turn directions once they’re within a few blocks of our house. But the chances of that actually happening are so remote it’s really not worth planning for. We only take our kids to birthday parties (we meet the parents when we drop them off), school activities (we know their teachers), or friends houses, and we let them go on their own to the local parks. We give them a time to come home, and if they don’t come home when expected, they lose their privilege to go out on their own for a bit.

So I’m not concerned at all about emergencies, and I think parents are way too worried about it. If I don’t trust my kid on their own somewhere, a phone isn’t going to make me feel more comfortable. In my eyes, a phone is a privilege, and privileges are earned and can absolutely be revoked.

I’ll probably give my kids phones before they leave the house, but not until they earn that trust, and also not before they actually need one. My current target is 14yo w/ a dumb phone, and 16yo w/ a smart phone (for directions). Once I’ve given them a phone, I’ll trust them completely with it (no tracking) until they violate my trust, at which point they’ll lose it. That’s how I’d prefer to be treated as a kid, so that’s how I’ll treat them.

I certainly don’t know your situation or anything, so apologies if this comes off as tone-deaf.

And yeah, I completely appreciate that a lot of communication happens through phones. However, most of that communication is a distraction, and a lot of it is damaging. If you have a phone but nobody talks to you, that’s worse than if you don’t have a phone at all. Likewise, if you have a phone and use it responsibly, you’ll likely get called out for “ignoring” people’s messages because so many people expect a ridiculous level of engagement these days.

Calls and texts aren’t really a thing any more, and most people communicate through apps instead. That means that even without a phone, there’s a pretty good chance you can still be included if you have access to a computer at home. I grew up in a weird transition where people moved from IM to SMS, because IM just didn’t work yet on phones yet everyone had phones. We’re seeing the opposite trend these days, where now that most people have massive data plans, apps are becoming king again.

So in my mind, this means that not providing a phone doesn’t cut them off, it just delays communication. That means they’ll have less of a chance to become addicted to all the SM BS, while still being able to be included in things. I think that’s a healthy boundary to set.

That said, absolutely none of my friends communication during HS or my communication in college was productive. We didn’t “discuss homework” or anything related to school, we merely arranged hangouts and flirted, with a little gossip to round things out. I highly doubt things have changed much, because that’s just what kids do. When I was young, cell phones weren’t a thing, and my sister spent hours on the phone talking about nonsense with her friends. That’s just how teenagers work, if they’re talking to friends, they’re not talking about school work.

That said, I’ll certainly be paying attention as my kids get older. My oldest is around 10, and they’re definitely too young for a phone (though I’m debating giving them their own PC). I have nephews and nieces who are a few years older, and I can roughly see which ones I’d be comfortable giving access to a phone, and which I’m not, and that point seems to be around 14yo. But whether I give my kids one depends on how much I trust them. We’ll probably test drive a loaner phone in a year or two before deciding if they should have their own phone.

Agreed.
Everyone saying they’d give a smartphone at best under best behaviour at age >16 are very suspect to me.
I would bet a solid 100€ they werent perfect kids to their parents either and worked around restrictions or talked long enough to be convincing or their lives were so long ago that they only remember a time with land lines and mobile calls costing 9ct per minute.
Getting a phone this late is socially crippling them.

IMO late middle school is a good starting age while giving them guidance.

At all users: Take it with a grain of salt. This is coming from someone without children but as someone that has been in school during the late 2000s and early 2010s

No sane people use iPhones where I live. It was a thing of glamorous girls and people not doing actual work for some time, but now even them I don’t see with iPhones.

For me personally - as it’s something I need, but not something I want to invest into, nor something I like, the Android phone I use for these things (another SIM) was almost as cheap as the dumbphone I use for calls. Comparable to groceries for a week.

I don’t think there are iPhones one can buy for that price, ha-ha.