Mom's own iPhone use ToC (Terms of Conditions) to her son

Until around 16 (though I could go on to argue for any age up until the day someone dies, at a slow decrease in the ratio on the first, a drastic decrease on the second, and a moderate increase on the final), well over half of all decisions a child makes stem directly from what their parents taught them, a much smaller pieces of the pie being influence from friends/acquaintances, and ideas they formed on their own with no outside influence being being by far the smallest. Hell, until grade school they are just regurgitating morals, ideas, values, whatever you want to call them, without even fully understanding what the basic underlying concepts mean until much later; they are able to learn very quickly at a young age, but the downside of that is, it's just memorization, linking things together, not understanding what the concepts on either end actually mean.

I'm pretty sure we both know that I was not talking about an age that would be younger than that in the OP's article.
That being said, yeah, it' easy for children (once again, being 13+ in age) just to 'be a product of their environment'. Which is what many people blame as the problem with our society. Granted it plays a role, but as I stated before I do believe there comes a time when you can't blame a child's parents for how they act. They have a sense of discernment. But based on what you're saying, is that every choice that an individual makes is based on what they were taught as I child.

I don't see justification in this for all cases. Yes, it is common. But it does not apply to everyone. There are those (myself included) that look into why we believe what we believe, why we make the decisions we do. I honestly could care less about what my parents have taught me at this point in life.

And no, stricter is not better. Consistency is better. You make a rule, you enforce it, every single time, in the exact same way. Wiggle room is something a child should not have when it comes to rules; it makes them grow up and become politicians that believe the laws for an entire country should also have wiggle room, and look at that, here we are. The best way to create a serial killer is to erratically punish them for different things in different ways based on your mood without explaining the reasoning behind it to them.

I agree with consistency, however, if the child is older (say, 16+), and can provide some sort of logical reasoning as to why there could be a modification to a rule, I see no issue with it. For example, say the student's curfew is usually 9pm. Say it's spring break, and the weekend. In my opinion if the child wanted to make a compromise with the parent to allow them to stay out later, I don't see that as wrong.

In this case, it is technology that is made for an adult, so I feel that she is absolutely right in not giving him ownership of it. I've worked with computers all my life and even I didn't get one (a computer; to this day I still use a crappy last century cellphone because I see no need for something higher end; it's a phone, that's what I need it for, and that's all I need it for) until I turned 16.

I agree with that. There's no need for that age group to have that type of access to technology...I didn't have a phone, driver's license, computer, ipod, facebook, etc. until I turned 18.