> I don't think most teens need smartphones, honestly.

In today's schools, some teachers plan activities where students use their smart phones for specific projects, so this is becoming increasingly harder to do.

that's utterly ridiculous. what about students who can't afford smartphones?

There are old smartphones that, at this point, are cheaper than a BNIB dumbphone.

Even dumbphones can do MMS, though.

No MMS without a data plan. Unless something's changed.

yep, this, at least when I was at that age.

And in schools in my area J2ME-capable phone were actually so ubiquitous I already was a heavy user of things like Opera Mini, BombusMod (Jabber client), and MidpSSH—all that a decade ago, when prices were given for each megabyte of data transfer. But that was me, others were just sharing music and pictures through Bluetooth amongst themselves most of the time.