Generalizing asia? its poverty rates are among the highest in the world. i wont apologize for you being privileged enough to live in a nicer part of Asia but people in Thailand, Tibet, Indonesia, and so many more with poverty rates in the double digit percentiles disagree with your sentiments. this is my experience.

You may have lived in Asia for 20 years but i traveled it for 3 and have probably seen more than you. i used Tibet as a main example because i thought you may have been able to recognize one of the poorest places in Asia and thought "oh yeah that makes sense". but seems not.

lastly. your statement on racism is redundant. anything thats less common is less understood. thats that. its not only smartphones. this applies to the internet as a whole. places where it was less common despite having full access to it neglected its ability to infinitely ease their lives. thats why the countries latest to adopting it tend to lag behind China, U.S, and Europe.

higher end smart phones as in anything 1000$+. i studied in Tibet for 4 months. i'm not "speaking out of my ass". and youre completely controlling the narrative for no reason.

smartphones are not as common in SEA. there are tons of under privileged families that dont make enough to own them. smartphones are highly stigmatized as a sign of the rich and some families just look down on them because of what they represent via the stigma.

who the fuck compared intelligence? they dont have the same access. not many young kids who are lucky enough to have the phone quite understand all the capabilities. i've experienced this first hand communicating through google translate with a few kids (who had smartphones) asking for directions.

they were shocked.

read the phone name. seems likely it's SEA. higher end smart phones are very uncommon and having one at all even more so. not many over there understand what a vast resource these pocket computers are. redmi is near exclusively available in Asia

edit: guess i have to clarify teenagers with phones tend to not understand their full potency since people want to turn this into racism. i'm not calling asians dumb lmao. see below comment for more clarification.