We just got Apple Watches for our 11 and 13 year olds. It is a decent middle ground, as up to now we’ve been very limiting of their screen time.

Our district has strict blocks in place at school, but most kids still already have phones. We did it for that reason and so so we don’t introduce phones at the same time they start driving (which is when we figured they’d actually need it)

One thing I wasn’t quite prepared for is kids use huge group chats that result in hundreds of messages a day. Learned how to mute discussions really quick. You can also limit access to groups with parental controls.

Key is talking to your kids regularly and helping them navigate life. Real and digital.