'Every day, a child is exposed to two pieces of inappropriate or harmful content': I've spent hours researching the best phone for my son — here are the safest options I've found, from iPhones to 'dumbphones'

A boy looking at a smartphone.

“Which smartphone should you buy your child?” This question has been bouncing around in my head for a while now. My eldest child is 10 years old, and he’ll be starting secondary school soon. We tested the Garmin Bounce 2 smartwatch to see if it could be an alternative to buying a smartphone, but found it lacked sufficient LTE coverage in rural areas.

As a result, I’ve spent countless hours researching smartphone options because there’s a lot at stake when you put a phone into the hand of a child. The Australian government has realized this and put in place a social media ban for under-16-year-olds. There is a similar concern in the US; a landmark court ruling found that Meta and YouTube had knowingly designed addictive social media products.