@Conniethecatapillar
I can tell you what’s currently working for us, but I don’t know how well that will translate into tips/advice since every family is so different.
Thinking about factors that probably help us:
My eldest enjoys school, has plenty friends (all of whom have smartphones), and the school has a 'phones off and in bags during the school day' policy, which is enforced. There's no implicit pressure during the school day to be on phones, or feeling left out because everyone else has disappeared into their phone.
They walk or cycle to and from school and their various activities, so don't need a phone for bus apps/passes, and they're comfortable being with their own thoughts. Sometimes they'll meet friends along the way and when they do, they all chat as they walk rather than being on phones.
As parents, we're content not knowing exactly where our kids are at all times. It initially felt a bit daunting, but I think if we suck up that discomfort my children are more likely to feel that it's safe to be out and about. If we use live tracking, it's generally for a short period and specific purpose, e.g. an adult going off on a solo bike ride, or to enable whoever's at home to make a meal for when everyone's returned from whatever they're doing.
Our kids know how to enjoy their free time without their own personal screen. We've been fortunate to be able to spend time and money on introducing our kids to activities to find things they enjoy, look forward to and want to do in their free time. This would have been much harder, and we'd have had to think a lot more creatively, if that wasn't so much the case. At the moment, our eldest does after school clubs three days a week, they also have other sports clubs on three evenings and they do a couple of independent training sessions mid-week for their main sport. They love reading, so after sport and a shower, they're very happy to sink into a chair and read. Sometimes, we'll play board games, and occasionally they even want to spend time chatting with us(!)
We talk with our kids about tech, social media, the pros and cons, algorithms, pile-ons, online bullying, cybersecurity, porn, etc. I share things I've learned with my kids in a reasonably age-appropriate way, so they can at least understand my perspective. I ask them their views. They know that if they get a smartphone, they are likely to use it in a similar manner to how their friends do and spend multiple hours on it each day, which must logically displace the same amount of time from things they're currently doing, whether that's sleeping or doing things they enjoy in their free time. Neither of them think this sounds like a great swap.
We do have screens at home. We sometimes watch things together as a family on the (one and only) TV, and chat about what's going on. Our kids each have a locked-down pc in their bedrooms. For a few months, they both played lots of games. Eldest now mostly ignores it other than using it for homework. Youngest is more likely to spend time playing games on it, and also using it for homework, but as their reading has improved to the level where they can read genuinely enjoyable books for themself, they've also ditched a lot of screen time in favour of reading.
Not having a smartphone makes my eldest 'different' from other kids at school, but it's probably not the most obvious thing that's different about my child - they're a very different build from most kids, they're at/near top of the class across multiple subjects, they miss some classes to get to sports competitions, and they have quite different interests from many of their peers. Our eldest hasn’t suffered any negative attention from not having a smartphone; it's not something they see as being an issue.