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For now, I try to give him a mostly screen free childhood, with occasional "treats" of dinosaur documentaries on rainy days.
How do you manage?
Avoid a real smartphone for as long as possible. 9th grade would be ideal. Give other ways to communicate - smart watcj, dumb phone, Discord on laptop.
This is about manners, literacy, etiquette, and skills. The medium is not the message, etc.
I would type more but I am on the other side of the line now, on my smartphone while I wait for my son at the orthodontist. :)
Substitute sugar or something else in the house for donuts. Apply that.
The main thing is to resist the temptation to use the technology as the babysitter. But, oh god, that temptation is the hardest ever, some days.
Many schools ban phones during class anyway, so maybe get him a watch instead.
And here's the hardest - are you addicted to screens, phones, and social media? Then you've already lost. Get everyone a Light Phone: https://www.thelightphone.com
We will likely heavily restrict screentime. Ideally no screentime until we are two, and then we will probably allow 15 minutes of "watching" a day.
I suspect we will make a pretty broad exception for actual games though. Probably airplane rides will get some general exception too since that is just a limited environment.
As we get older we may allow some more passive screen time but probably push heavily on "doing things" instead.
Montessori has this great rule when making decisions about toys: Any toy that does the entertaining for the child is disallowed. Any toy that lets the child entertain themselves and is safe is fine. I like this because it captures the "legos are great, obnoxious light up sing song toys are bad" that aligns with my inner feelings.
For our screen time we allow, I will preselect content and load it up on a tablet. Probably clone my current youtube system that downloads content from youtube and serves it up on a UI with no autoplay or suggestions. I will likely firewall off the device from the wider internet but allow it lan access so it can still get regular media updates.
They're 10 and 6 now and we're a bit more lenient about it. They have a bit in the morning before school as motivation and a bit more in the morning on the weekend. They play outside a lot with each other and with friends so we're less worried than we've been in the past.
In terms of social isolation ... our kids will 9 times out of 10 voluntarily skip screen time if they have a friend to play with or often they'll play a game on an iPad with a friend, which feels better than on their own. I've read that the problems with too much screen time comes down to reducing time moving their bodies, building social skills, and thinking for themselves. They seem to be doing great with that on their own so our anxiety around it has gone down quite a bit over time (it was quite high in the beginning).
Our oldest is now asking for her own phone, which is a whole other thing. I'm desperate not to become a family that just sits around with our heads buried in our devices and I've had to be mindful myself of being a good example there.