I understand it can be used for those things, it just seems like it comes with a fairly hefty downside also. You can get a Moto E5 prepaid for $40-$50 if you get it from an AT&T store and sign up for a $15-$20 a month prepaid service (likely cheaper than adding it to a plan anyway), and that's a fairly modern phone and includes a FM radio.

It's not free, which I understand, but it's also not nearly as likely to be immediately exploited by some of the various problems older phones have had (SMS hacks, browser exploit hacks, etc).