Or parents could just take responsibility for their own children and not buy them a phone instead of outsourcing their parental responsibilities to the government.
It’s not 1995 any more. My 13 year old gets social contact doing things like playing Minecraft with people from school, organised via WhatsApp with group chats and then yelling about diamond swords and lava chickens or whatever.
There’s then the simple reality that most schools require smartphones for things like homework. It’s set on devices you can only access via an app. Ok maybe you could run some form of android emulator and maybe that works and maybe they can’t do the homework on the bus on the way home and instead can just stare out of the window, but then the teachers tell them to do something in class.
Then once they leave home at 18 and get introduced to something which has been banned yet is completely normal, they go overboard anyway.
Those very responsible would likely do that. But then you have a spectrum from "fully responsible but on occasions slip" to "not responsible at all". You can help some make the "good" decision and prevent others from making "bad" decisions. Hopefully those who grew up with healthier environments will have higher chances for becoming "fully responsible".
Seems we don't live in the same country and so we don't have the same "current government." Yes, if I were living in US, I wouldn't want to give the "current government" more power. Though, one might consider what is the cause and what is effect in the US political situation.