[JeremyNT]

I can buy my kid a very cheap android phone and lock it down to only run a couple of select apps.

The advantage of this is that it is as smart or dumb as I allow it to be.

Now that she is a little older (8th grade) I've slowly increased the allowed apps and screen time. She is able to do really useful things with it.

So in short: you can make a smart phone dumb, but you can't make a dumb phone smart.