Kids cant find a way if they dont have access to a phone.

To be able to do this they need unrestricted access to a smart phone in their personal time. This is something parents very much can control for 10-12yr olds.

A parent can reasonably ensure that their child doesn't have a phone. Ensuring that they don't have access to a phone is much more difficult. I suppose that you can insist that your children only socialize with other children under your supervision, the effect of which is twofold: you can see that they don't use a phone, and they will be much less likely to have friends in the first place.

It's very hard to not give them internet access at all though even if you don't give them a phone, because they need it for homework and you can't and don't want to supervise them every moment they are doing homework.

You enable parental control on the phone before you give it to your kid. Then you can easily manage allowed applications/web sites and screen time.

A lot of parental control systems stop working when they turn 13 so you have a system that works fine and then suddenly it stops working. I know a lot of parents who have complained about this.

Apple has MDM (Mobile Device Management) that locks a device down pretty well.

>Kids just don't understand the effects that it has on them

Neither does anybody else since it's not settled science. And even then it's questionable how much you can trust the science due to the replication crisis.

My parents believed that sitting too close to the TV ruined my eyesight, rather than it being an indicator that I needed glasses.

OTOH turns out spending time outdoors during childhood appears to reduce the risk of developing myopia.

I believe that too. I think myopia is an adaptation that we acquire by spending too much time in dim lighting. Ie indoors.

Daylight outside is an order of magnitude brighter (and will therefore give you more detail to resolve) than indoor lighting.

But that's just my personal belief. Sitting too close to the TV ruining your eyes is a just an urban myth. The story goes that once upon a time a company did produce faulty CRT TVs that could harm eyesight if you sat too close to them, but that was decades before I was born.

"Epidemiologic research indicates that greater average daily light exposure is associated with a reduced axial elongation during childhood"

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25158414211059246

As the father of two children who grew up with the Internet, which I restricted for them, and grandfather of five, one of which is 13, I would say yes, parents always have the ultimate say in it.

A child shouldn't even have a smartphone IMO.

Of course they have a say in it. It’s bordering on neglect to give a 10 year old that junk.