Partly in response to Sol (but I'm not quoting, because .. yuck!), and partly more things I remembered:
(geez, this is an essay - sorry!)
When one of our kids entered middle school (this was a while ago) he requested an iPhone, with various "I'll be able to reach you" justifications. We discussed this in a conversation meant to tease apart the "I need to reach my parents" from the "I want a status symbol" and eventually all agreed on a used IPod, which was mostly adequate for a couple of years -- he could iMessage his friends and play limited games and listen to music. Turns out the "I need to reach you" issue wasn't really an issue just then.
Also, no one in my house has a phone that cost more than $200: we mostly buy used older (and less-cool) phones. Both kids have jobs: if they want to raise $999 (or whatever) and spend it that way, that's on them. It's their cost/benefit tradeoff to make.
On Sol's stuf (yuck again!): kids can be assholes, as can adults. The Internet can be a stinky place (heck, even threads in the off-topic section of this forum can get fairly nasty from where I'm sitting: no one has threatened explicit violence, but there are plenty of conversations that reduce to "I am entitled to believe that you are lesser because you are female. And don't dare call me sexist!"). You can't control the actions of random people out there, but you can try to set a tone for your kids and your community. Particularly if your kids are minors, you can grab screen images of monumentally inappropriate messages that were sent to them and discuss with the other parents, or the school counselors and administrators, or the police, if they're bad enough. (YMMV -- I've talked with school safety officers here in Hippistan, and they're into restorative justice.)
We have sons, so we routinely have conversations about treating other people as fully-fledged human beings, not things. If you volunteer with boys/young men, these are conversations that are potentially available for you to have -- how do you figure it feels to be realistically threatened with sexualized violence? Will that person want to engage with you further? Does it make you feel powerful? Is that something you'd say in person? With your grandma in the room? I do, in real life, have short conversations with my (older) son and his friends about some of these issues if I overhear this type of language -- that's not acceptable in my house or in my presence, and they get to hear (briefly) about why. (I work at home: there are routinely small groups of teenaged boys in the house. And it's a small house -- if they're here, I can probably hear their discussions.)
It hasn't come up in my life, but I'm confident there are analogous conversations to have with young women: are you treating that person as an object? How would you feel if someone talked to/about you that way? What are you getting out of this?
Sol, I'm pretty sure you already did this, but a reminder to other parents: especially for younger teenagers it's helpful to explain WHY (in an age-appropriate way) you are limiting their access to various apps. And possibly having that conversation with their friends' parents as well. It can be as simple as "I want you to be safe and healthy, and there are things going on here that are meant to encourage you not to be.".
And sometimes you have to explain why something is horrible -- the kids just know it's transgressive and gets a response from the adults. Sometimes I think there's genuine ignorance about why nearby adults recoil in horror, just a feeling of power that you got them to do that. So the "Alabama n**" kid might need a history lesson, more then anything else. Or confused-looking persistent questioning <-- I'm a lady of a certain age, I can keep asking "but WHY is that funny?" for a long time.
And in general, it's helpful to explain to teenagers that there are major corporations monetizing their eyeballs. Every time the youtube algorithm successfully gets you to click on another link, someone is getting $, and you're wasting another XXX minutes of your time. You are more than a consumer and an object! No one wants to be used by the system that way.
I'm a big fan of getting kids off their phones/computers and out doing things that involve engaging with other human beings. For my kids, this was soccer (and music). Tying back into another thread in this folder, you might need to help your kids find another thing to do (rather than just forbidding this thing), but it's way easier to have a healthier activity to substitute for all the issues with this one. And if that involves interacting with other (preferably different) living human beings, that's awesome!