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Apple

An Apple Watch for Your 5-Year-Old? More Parents Say Yes. (buffalonews.com) 77

Posted by EditorDavid from the wristy-business dept.
"Across the United States, parents are increasingly buying Apple Watches and strapping them onto the wrists of children as young as 5," reports the New York Times: The goal: to use the devices as a stopgap cellphone for the kids. With the watch's cellular abilities, parents can use it to reach and track their children, while the miniature screens mitigate issues like internet addiction.

Children and teenagers appear to have become a disproportionately large market for smartwatches as a whole. In a 2020 survey of American teenagers by the investment bank Piper Sandler, 31% said they owned a smartwatch. That same year, 21% of adults in the United States said they owned one, according to the Pew Research Center.

The use of smartwatches as a children's gadget shows how the audience for a consumer technology product can morph in unexpected ways. It has also given new life to the Apple Watch, which was unveiled in 2015 and has been variously positioned as a fitness tracker, a style statement or a way to free yourself from an iPhone.

Apple has deliberately turned the watch into a device that can be attractive for children and their parents. In 2020, the company released the Apple Watch SE, which had fewer features than a premium model and was priced $120 cheaper. Apple also introduced Family Setup, software that let parents track their children's locations, manage their contacts list and limit their notifications.
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An Apple Watch for Your 5-Year-Old? More Parents Say Yes. More

An Apple Watch for Your 5-Year-Old? More Parents Say Yes.

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  • Better for Seniors w Health Issues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rnmartinez ( 968929 ) on Sunday September 04, 2022 @10:46AM (#62851153)
    I got my mom one so that fall detection will notify me and 911

  • An interesting substitute (Score:5, Interesting)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Sunday September 04, 2022 @10:48AM (#62851155)
    Having a cellular watch allows for the communication parents crave, without all the distractions. Interesting.

    It certainly is good to keep social media and porn out of their hands- the internet is not friendly to human brains, especially kid brains.

    • Are you old enough the days when we thought the internet would make everyone smarter?

      • I miss the days when we all thought a data driven internet powered utopia was on the horizon. . .sometimes feels like the optimism all but gone unless it's a keynote being delivered to investors to drive funding.

      • 1%era

        The Internet made the smart smarter and the dumb... TikTok/Twitter/Snap/Instagram users

        I have personally very carefully tweaked my YouTube to only show me educational and crafts suggestions. I have now watched over 2000 videos on Khan Academy. Wikipedia has burn marks on it from my flipping the pages.

        Then, when I see some peoples phones... They have play list of some strange woman sneaking up on people and whining something in Spanish to scare people.

        I think we have managed to make the world a lot smar

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      It allows the child to be tracked.

  • I really hate seeing the term "disproportionate" used in nearly every article these days. It's always used with a negative connotation as if everything in life has to match *exactly* with demographics. It's a nebulous argument that means absolutely nothing and is used to justify nearly all cockamamie ideas to solve the made up problem of "disproportion".

  • call it what it is a tracking device

    • Re:call it what it is a tracking device (Score:4, Informative)

      by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Sunday September 04, 2022 @11:25AM (#62851237)
      It only tracks the watch, not the kid.
      • It doesn't track a kid who doesn't want to be tracked which is I doubt the purpose. But should your kid get inadvertently lost in a crowded place, they can be found which should make both parents and child feel better. I don't have an Apple Watch for my kid but he does willingly wear an Airtag if we go very crowded places so that there isn't a risk of getting separated. The kids probably think the watch is cool. And they're not so dumb as to not leave it in their locker should they cut school for the da

  • Here's a thought, proaction. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Sunday September 04, 2022 @11:24AM (#62851231)
    Instead of reaction, which is what this watch is.

    In other words:
    Know where your friggin' kids are and what they're doing. Spend parental time with them instead of getting them a virtual "tether" that can easily be lost or traded (kids do that). My mother and myself were both able to do this before the tech evolved.

    Jesus, it's like current parents don't really want to raise their kids, just have them. And bullshit to anyone claiming life is just too complex now. Another bullshit to those thinking this might help in abductions. The first thing an abductor will do is remove the watch and perhaps toss it on the bed of a big rig. Now you're looking in Wyoming instead of two blocks down.

    • Well it goes hand in hand with 40 years of "stranger danger" which was never really that common of an issue to begin with. Adam Walsh drove everyone into a godamn frenzy and the media ran with it and we've never come down from there.

      Even when child abductions do happen 95% of the time it's someone the child already knows.

      • Dude there are around 350 stranger abductions per year just in the USA. That's a big number. Over a period 10 years, that's 3500. That's one in one hundred thousand. You do not see the point of getting that number down to as close to zero as possible? People spend resources on lottery tickets with one in 20 million odds, it makes sense to spend some on preventing something with one in 100 thousand odds.

        • 350 people out of 330,000,000 people is a extraordinarily small number. It's a 1.3 in a 1,000,000 chance roughly. By all means, watch out for your children and pay attention to your own surrounds, adults get abducted as well. This is not something dedicating even more resources to is going to help on.

          Most abductions of children are also done by another parent or family and friends. More likely to get murdered then abducted.

          I bet more fairness in family courts would lead to fewer abductions and that by focu

          • Most people don't think of Custody Disputes as being in the same category as other Abductions.

          • Yo, it's 350 child abductions by strangers per year. The abductions by non-strangers is many times that amount (well in the tens of thousands). Over a ten year period, for stranger abductions that's a 1 in 100,000 chance for the entire US population of kids and adults. It's 1 in 20,000 kids.

            • That only makes fairness in family court more important and the rest of my comment still stands. Trying to save 350 people versus all the negatives is not a good trade off. It also doesn't guarantee those 350 don't still happen. Ben Franklin had a great quote about trading liberty for security and getting neither in return. Still true today.

              • Here is the proper quote I was referring to.

                “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

                Since I kind of butchered it in my reference.

        • If somebody is going to abduct your kid, they are going to take off the smart watch. On the other hand gets get lost in large crowded places (theme parks, stadiums, fairs, et cetera) now and again and its scary for kids and parents. The ability to find them in an emergency seems well worth the price. My kid has only an Airtag not the watch because the Airtag is cheaper. And no I don't expect him to wear it all the time so I can track him. He wears it if we all go somewhere together where there's a risk

    • Know where your friggin' kids are and what they're doing. Spend parental time with them instead of getting them a virtual "tether" that can easily be lost or traded (kids do that). My mother and myself were both able to do this before the tech evolved.

      Glad we didn't have helicopter parents (myself and my siblings, not so sure about the rest of you lot) because exploring the artillery range would have been a royal pain if my Mom could call me and tell me to get my ass home whenever I went downrange....

      • Or, she could have known, or been able to check in general, where you are and known not to call you unless there was some something absolutely urgent. It isn't helicoptering if there is no interference and some general awareness.

      • I'm sure you'd have been smart enough to take the watch off BEFORE heading down range.

    • At least that gives some indication as to when/where the abduction took place and that might be helpful information. They can correlate vehicles from cameras that look on the street etc. It's one extra thing that the abductor can make a mistake doing.

    • sorry buddy, nobody can spend 24 hours a day with their children, even with two parents at home. Do the math. At some point you have to pay someone to look after them or you have to build up some independence in children with whatever technological safety net you can find.

    • Instead of reaction, which is what this watch is. In other words: Know where your friggin' kids are and what they're doing. Spend parental time with them instead of getting them a virtual "tether" that can easily be lost or traded (kids do that). My mother and myself were both able to do this before the tech evolved. Jesus, it's like current parents don't really want to raise their kids, just have them. And bullshit to anyone claiming life is just too complex now. Another bullshit to those thinking this might help in abductions. The first thing an abductor will do is remove the watch and perhaps toss it on the bed of a big rig. Now you're looking in Wyoming instead of two blocks down.

      Many people want AirTags and Apple Watches for peace of mind, not to rely on them...the same way I want airbags and a seatbelt. I've never been in an auto accident. I never plan on being in one. I will not drive any differently because I have airbags and a seat belt, but I appreciate having them.

      I am guessing you haven't convinced anyone to reproduce with you yet? If so, you must be an underwhelming parent. You've never had a kid get super excited and wander off? Have you ever tried watching 2 in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by orlanz ( 882574 )

      Know where your friggin' kids are and what they're doing.

      WHEN has that _ever_ happened? Really? My mom didn't know where I was 1/2 the school day. She didn't know if I walked home/school that day. She just knew I would be home for lunch, dinner, and sometime after 9pm to bath and sleep. She got worried when it approached 11pm. This was the same with MOST of the kids in our city (we all met at the baseball/soccer fields).

      We had some guys whos parents were literally like: "Don't know, don't care, don't get caught! If you do, don't involve me." They weren't

    • Not using Apple Watch as an air tag to track my kids every movement. We use it as a form of communication for our 5th graders that isn't a phone. We tried phones with the older kids; it was a constant battle, and we swore never to do that again. It's super convenient to be able to text back and forth on where to be picked up where they are at and what time they are coming home (when necessary). They don't spend hours on end using the watch like they do phones/tablets/Switch. I highly recommend it.

  • Makes more sense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday September 04, 2022 @11:39AM (#62851255)
    Than a lot of people would think. Give my 10 year old a full cell phone? Not the best parenting move on the planet, and their chances of wrecking a phone is high. But its useful to be able to call them, text them, get their location, and let them use a limited suite of apps. Other companies make kid-centric cellphone watches for around 100 bucks. Or, for an extra 100, I get a waaayyyyy better device the integrates flawlessly with my other devices (if I’m in the apple ecosystem).

    As a parent, if I have an extra hundred bucks to cough up to make life just a little easier, this is a no-brainer. So, this isn’t for people at the bottom of the economic ladder, but totally fine for middle class types. Drink fewer budweisers for a few weeks and the cost difference is covered.

    • I don't know... The lowest price I'm seeing is $400.
      www.apple.com/shop/buy-watch/apple-watch

      Don't have one myself and it may be fantastic at everything it does, but, personally, I think that's a steep price for something for a 5 year old.

      But, ya know, if it works for you, it works for you.

    • When is your kid somewhere that you need to call them directly? Not when they're at school, if it's urgent you call the school or wait till school is out. Not when they're at a friend's, you call the friend's parents. If they're going to go play in a park or the woods or something, maybe let them take a cheap piece of crap phone with them, but first remember that fully-portable cell phones didn't exist at all until around thirty years ago and billions of children were raised just fine.

  • Never make price your top priority when you're buying optics, tools, networking gear, anything where construction materials matter, and electronic devices you carry on your person. Apple hardware is very expensive, but in my experience, it is more than worth it.

  • I think people benefit from being disconnected some of the time (yeah, I'm old). I've had an Apple Watch for years - but while I find it useful, especially at work; I've recently started taking it off Friday evenings and leaving it off until Monday morning. I'm even leaving my phone on the table for good chunks of time... and after a bit of adjustment, I'm enjoying the "down time".

    Now way back when I was a kid... if my parents had gotten me an Apple Watch (had such a thing existed), I probably would have ta

  • Normalising helicopter parenting. Treat them like convicted felons with an electronic tag. Yay!

  • There are cellular smartwatch products made specifically for children that would be a much better choice than an Apple Watch. (certainly for a 5-year-old)

    The ones I saw are cheaper, don't have any internet capabilities whatsoever, have built-in GPS tracking (including being able to set zones and get alerts if the watch leaves the zone), don't need an iPhone to work and even have a class mode that disables everything except emergency SOS mode.

    Plus there would be no real reason to steal one unlike an Apple Wa

  • Parental controls (Score:3, Informative)

    by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Sunday September 04, 2022 @04:34PM (#62851825)

    My children by age 6yo had been exposed to images of Chucky, Pennywise, something I haven't figured out called "Freya" (maybe they misheard) -- all from other similar-age kids with Apple Watches. Sometimes it happened in the school playground, sometimes at camp. All places where I don't have supervision. Moreover, every child they've met with Apple Watches has seemed to have been able to display such images on their watches. (I don't even yet know the mechanism by which they bring up the images -- do they do a Siri image search? or did they somehow already put the images on their watches?)

    The result was predictable nightmares for a few days, and one of my kids refused to flush the toilet for a few months for fear that one of those monsters would come up through the drains. I'd prefer if they'd not been exposed to such images yet, but it's not too bad because I got to talk through with them about what they'd seen, and work with them on understanding and dealing with it.

    My takeaway is that few parents end up doing effective parental controls for their kids' Apple Watches. I know when my 1st-grader used a MacBook for remote-schooling during covid, the MacOS parental controls were flat out broken in numerous respects, and I had to switch to Windows. The iOS parental controls seem more robust and reliable so I don't know why parents don't seem to use them.

    (Ways in which MacOS parental controls are broken? (1) upon wake the mac often doesn't allow use even when it's been permitted by timetable; (2) when you try to whitelist Safari websites then it whitelists them by IP address after name resolution, so it's not possible to whitelist by a group of domains by wildcard, and anyway it breaks everytime a service changes its IP.)

  • They soon learned that without an iPad, normal crayons are much more fun.

  • FFS why not just superglue a gods-be-damned Apple AirTag to them? Wouldn't that be cheaper?

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