> In reality, it is about social pressure, not emergency use, all the other kids have phones, why can't I?
Straightforward, caring, non-judgemental talk might work: you shouldn't have it because your brain is at a too early developmental stage and you cannot cope with the addiction. This is how we explained it to our son. A relative had given him an old smartphone in 1st grade (I never appreciated that gift!), but we replaced it with a dumb phone in 2nd grade with zero problems. He was able to choose among a few models himself (picked a Nokia 105 [1]). He was absolutely okay with that.
It has a few silly demo games, but he doesn't play them much. When we go to grandma's for two days, he voluntarily leaves his phone at home, because "nobody will probably call me" (see: he realizes there's not much else he could do with the phone!). During the smartphone-year, in contrast, he had obvious trouble putting the smartphone away, even if he didn't really "do" anything in it; just scrolling around and launching grownups' old apps he couldn't understand. (I wonder if physical buttons cause less addiction than a touchscreen?)
In short, our kid is absolutely fine with the dumb phone. It really does work simply as a "tool", for calls and messages. Recently he even asked for a mechanical wrist watch because he doesn't seem to like carrying the phone in his pocket or backpack.
I'm close to 40 and a long-time hobbyist Linux nerd. I've intentionally never ever owned a smartphone (for some odd reason, reading mails etc on that laughably tiny screen seemed utterly stupid in 2003; even thinking about the endless possibilities (=bloat!) of later smartphones always made me feel overwhelmed, so I never wanted one). So I, too, only have a dumb phone -- and, same experience here: it really does work just as a "tool for making phone calls or sending messages". Nothing else. Living without smartphone apps is actually way easier than most people seem to imagine.
Another thing: I'm thinking that maybe (at least in our kid's public school in a Small East European Country) some kind of "anti tech addiction" meme is also making rounds amongst schoolchildren? If this is true, then maybe dumb phones are even somewhat, err, hip in some circles these days? At least elementary school children do seem to care about their mental well-being -- when you tell them about this with empathy, simple but honest cause-and-effect examples and without condemnation (I think this last bit is key: no judgements where judging is avoidable; show, don't tell!). It is also most interesting to get young children to really think about that they actually do have a brain up there, a brain that is an actual part of them, and that this brain always needs some care.
1: https://res.cloudinary.com/telia-pim/image/upload/v163282637...
