> Great way of ruining your child's relationships. I had a similar conversation with my wife a few years back. Her sister's teenage kids insisted they needed i

> Great way of ruining your child's relationships. I had a similar conversation with my wife a few years back. Her sister's teenage kids insisted they needed iPhones "because all our friends use them." And my wife explained this to me like this was a perfectly rational reason. I started laughing and told her "If our kids said that to you, they'd get a long discussion about how that's a 'follower's mentality' and you're letting people who don't have your best interests at heart control your life for superficial reasons." That being said, I think it depends on where OP's child is "at" mentally. It may be important enough to the child to still buy an iPhone simply because you don't want your kid to be miserable. But if that's the case, you should also try to have a conversation with the kid saying "That's fine--it's obviously important enough to you right now, so we'll get an iPhone. But you might look back on this when you're older and think the brand of phone wasn't as important as you thought."