I've been there, but going to cybercafés instead of having an internet connection at home until very late. A simlar case with a mobile phone, having to use the one from my dad until I had 18.

I nearly ended up alone, as anynone would expected. Parents understood too late the value of sharing common culture points, up to the point to apologyze and feeling really desperate on the consecuences.

Cracking up wifi and such saved me up a little, but not much. I missed TONS of stuff and experiences. When I could finally got all the media and proper skills, it was really damn late.

Don't do this to your kids, then. Time doesn't roll back. Ever. Don't be a shitty narcisist parent and let your kids develop their OWN tastes.

> How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?

With a lot more difficulty.

Pick-ups and drop-offs? You walked yourself home, used your bike, or took the bus. This getting driven around is most ridiculous.

"I'll be done with marching band practice at 6:30"

"Ok, I'll come get you then"

We used to use payphones and call collect, then say a quick message when the collect service asked for your name.

"Who is calling?" "Hi mom practice is over come pick me up!"

The issue isn't that it couldn't be done without technology. The problem is when everyone else has moved on to the technology based solution (mobile phones) if you don't you're just out of luck.

We used landlines of course, and it was an utter pain in the behind.

There was no way of letting anyone know that you were running late once they were already underway to pick you up.

There's a line to toe - each kid is different, but with my daughter she went from a flip phone in middle school, to a smart phone in high school.

We didn't turn on mobile data for her smart phone (hand me down pixel) until about a year ago.

She is very responsible with it and it hasn't been much of an issue. She had no problems making friends, and if her phone was filtering shallow people out her friend pool a bit that probably wasn't a bad thing.

Now, my oldest son is dying to have a smartphone but really he just wants to use it as a tablet. I installed lineageOS on an old D821/Nexus5 and it can run some mobile games, and we have a chromebook.

We'll try the same flip phone in middle-school route for him. It fulfills the basic needs of emergency contact, and is a good test of responsibility with lower stakes.

This is a symptom of not encouraging children into extracurricular activities. If all you have to bond over is social media, your friendship is empty. That's how you create terminally-online, mentally ill people. Everyone needs third spaces like sports, scouts, music, church, clubs, and the like. They get you out of your house and head and surround you with people who share similar interests.

If .. many parents would do this (like you imply), then there would be many kids without a phone who can be friends with each other?

Also I doubt the "not being able to have friend without a phone" in general. But surely harder in most areas.

My gut reaction was "well, you can give them a phone, just lock down tiktok and other crap" but then I was thinking "well, in the end that doesn't matter in practice, they can buy a used device from a friend for pocket money and hiding it from me will be trivial", so... it all comes down to my relationship with the kid. Nothing else will work.