Thanks for your thoughtful reply! It is true that sometimes we fear the great vistas of the unknown, even when they hold more promise than peril.
To make things a bit more concrete, here’s how our family’s tech experiment is unfolding. In our home, my 12-year-old daughter (still smartphone-free, for now) does have her own laptop and access to essentially unfiltered internet (she’s free to set her own level of safe-search, etc.). We prefer the computer-based approach because it forces you to meaningfully sit down and choose to engage with the digital world. There isn’t the same opportunity to flit back and forth between real life conversation and digital distraction that a smartphone enables. It also means that when you’re consuming content, it’s because you’re choosing that consumer role — you always have the means at your fingertips to produce content, which isn’t necessarily true for phone-centered activities.
I don’t write to say this is the best approach, and we — like every family — are still exploring and learning. But I definitely don’t want to conflate having a smartphone with having access to the internet, because they are two different, albeit overlapping, questions.