Do they deserve to not be able to shop online without fear of having their payment information stolen? Or mistyping a URL in their non native language and ending up at a scam website that installs malware? Or simply having a device that comes to a crawl such that they cannot reliably video call their grandkids?
And no, it's not smartphones' faults. Most people just don't "get" desktop OS paradigms, or how web pages work, or any of that, and they don't really care to.
That's because they "won't miss freedom they never had".