https://www.payetteforward.com/how-to-hard-reset-iphone-why-its-bad/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2053231
First: the OP got their answer, I didn’t derail the thread, I mearly responded to people replying to my suggestion to try a soft reset, and even provided the steps to properly perform a hard reset. It was the people who responded to me that “derailed” the thread.
Second: Just because you personally haven’t noticed an issue with devices for people you’ve helped by telling them to force restart, doesn’t mean those issues never existed, and I highly doubt you’ve followed the people you’ve helped through the decades checking up on their devices and how long they last before needing to be replaced. The damage is cumulative, meaning the chances of one forced restart causing issues are slim to none. Most device manufacturers have systems in place to handle the occasional encounters with corrupted data and correct these issues. However, when you continuously introduce more and more corrupt data into a system, the likelihood of that system crashing and requiring a complete reload of the OS is even greater. Just ask anyone who has ever run Windows. Yes, Apple products are built well and handle these situations better than most - so these things rarely happen, but they are still susceptible to failure just like any other device.
