If we're talking about people having a hard time affording a phone - why tf are you bringing up high-end phones at all? I'm in no way poor and my $300 phone was already a pretty painful expense. In those cases, we'd be talking about a <$200 Chinaphone. Also yeah, indeed, there are affordable laptop options given how much of a necessity it feels like. That tends to be more value per dollar in a laptop too. Personally not comfortable buying secondhand though because I can't risk money on that scale, and there are much less guarantees on the state of the hardware, although would like to eventually learn how to do it as safely as buying new.

For me, a phone is mostly less distracting because it's not very comfortable to use compared to a laptop. It's much less likely to get sucked into doing unrelated things when the experience is actively not that pleasant (especially when it comes to anything with typing).

I don't feel comfortable reading from my laptop or phone in general. If a text isn't very short, I prefer saving it as .html or .pdf onto my e-reader, and that's such a MASSIVE improvement. That includes long comment sections too.

The only situation I can think of is when you're in public transport and settling down with a laptop or paper is not really feasible. But if that came up frequently, I'd rather buy a tablet. Some students in my class also use tablets in class instead of laptops.

I don't think it's generational at all, doing things on a phone is pretty objectively less comfortable.

It's generational in the sense that younger generations are far more accustomed to using phones than computers. They might not even be exposed to a computer until they need to use one for school. It's objectively less comfortable for them to use a computer when they never (or barely) used a mouse, physical keyboard, or any of that software before.

You can even see the same with games. All these kids growing up playing games on their iPads are really good at using those crappy touchscreen controls to play. Do you think they'd find using a physical controller comfortable? Maybe after a lot of practice, but why switch if you're already good at using the touch controls?

If true, then it's just unfamiliarity, not comfort. A bigger screen and bigger buttons are a pretty objective upgrade. "Why switch if you're already good at using touch controls" - because you assume it could be better? It not obstructing vision and being more precise is a good enough argument to try it out.

Although personally still not used to controllers. I mostly play FPS so that's only KB+M.

> It not obstructing vision and being more precise is a good enough argument to try it out.

An iPad has a big enough screen to not really obstruct anything important. It should be no less precise than a controller since it typically mimics the same joystick and buttons you'd have on a controller.

Having to carry a controller around is going to have a big impact on comfort.

First - why are you singling out Apple devices? Most kids who do have tablets are probably using something cheaper, it's not like a tween can be trusted with a device this expensive. And second - a lot more kids have phones than tablets, so the difference for a lot of people is still there.

A couple hundred is still a lot tho

To my understanding, you need Google services for passkeys to work, at least for now. I wouldn't want them even sandboxed, and on Lineage they're not restricted in any way so this would be a big concession.

For me, the main benefit over the browser are the progress tracking and playlists. You can do both with bookmarks in the browser, but it's much less convenient.

For downloads, I prefer Seal - a wrapper for yt-dlp. yt-dlp can update faster like this since doesn't have to update together with the app, and can add metadata and apply Sponsorblock. Could just use yt-dlp from Termux but this is more convenient.

I'd feel very ripped off because it gives a directly worse experience than free tools. Not only does it not turn off Shorts, as previous commenters mentioned, but the most offensive scam in my eyes are downloads. I'd need to use yt-dlp for them anyway, as the paid downloads are directly inferior - DRMed and expire without online checks. Worthless for archival that I'm currently doing a lot.