[throwaway173738]

Do you have children? One of the things I didn’t appreciate before becoming a parent is just how little my child actually knows about the world around him. There are so many situations where it’s actually neglectful parenting to just let him do what he wants. A really visceral example is that he likes chewing on things he finds around him. As you can imagine there are tons of things he can chew on that will make him really sick, and I can’t always remove him from public places to avoid those things, so I have to prevent him from putting his mouth on those things. How can you be so sure that using smartphones isn’t one of that class of harmful behaviors that a parent is neglectful for not preventing? As another example, teenagers are also wired by hormones to want to become sexually active. But this isn’t always in their best interest.

As a parent you have to make decisions with your child’s best interests at heart even when you know they conflict with the child’s desires. Doing this is not narcissistic it’s just good parenting.

[gizmo]

This isn't about toddlers and nobody here has argued that the parent who parents least parents best.

The list of things that are conceivably harmful to a child or teenager is practically infinite. It includes almost all sports, most hobbies, travel, and most food and drink. If you're going to ban everything that might be harmful of out an abundance of caution you will do tremendous harm to your kid. Yes, a smartphone might harm your kid but so might the absence of a smartphone. That's why it's good to look at the actions of other dedicated and thoughtful parents. If they all decide to give their kid a smartphone despite the known downsides it's not neglect, but the result of a thoughtful evaluation of the pros and cons. Demanding that a smartphone must be proven safe (impossible) is an absurd standard of evidence you don't apply to other areas of your life.