This isn’t that different from when I was a kid twenty years ago. Only instead of phones (though we all had phones back then too, even if they weren’t smart), it was game consoles, or Pokémon cards, or beanie babies or whatever.
That’s fair, I’m actually thinking of magic the gathering at the moment. Luckily my friend was given a huge chest of cards like hundreds and hundreds of cards, so we never had to buy any.
Assuming a new iPhone every 2 years, that's still pretty on par with historical premiums that would be being paid in the same timeframe for the "in" clothing brands. Designer jeans and Lululemons come to mind.
So, they’re mindless image driven consumers who are going to bankrupt themselves and their parents to the point of starvation AND bring about the end of democracy because… of which phone they use?