Parents turn to smart watches? Not in my household! Not one more fucking non Linux piece of shit spying screen more.
Can I interest you in an IBM WatchPad? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WatchPad
Yes, sign me up.
A modern day equivalent of “we don’t own a tv”
I guess? I think it’s more like “we don’t have cable/satellite TV.” My kids have watches, they just don’t connect to the internet. And why should they?
I have a smart watch, but I only use it to buy stuff, and I don’t wear it everywhere either. It’s not even really connected to my phone (I have to switch profiles to connect it).
I still say this to cable companies and other tv providers, is awesome and hilarious how they can’t continue their phone sale.
They still make flip phones that aren’t “smart”
Yes but kids are less likely to lose watches.
Also it’s rare that a classroom would have a no watches rule.
Good, kids are super easy to rob.
In five years: “After global ban of smart watches in schools, parents are increasingly turning to bodyguards and private chaperones”.
Children’s smartwatches are a stripped-down version of a typical smartwatch, and they allow parents to restrict app downloads, usage and calls from an approved list of contacts.
All of that you can do with a phone too. I do admit thought the argument of not losing it as easily since its on your arm makes sense.
I think you’re far less likely to spend a lot of screen time on a watch, hence the article
If you restrict the crap out of the phones so there is not much interesting to do for kids, it will have similar effects. E.g. they complain about YouTube on their kids phones, block it. Complain about games, don’t let them install them.
There’s also tools that can limit time spent in specific apps
It’s best when they don’t have an option to install and use this stuff to begin with, if it’s a problem. Mostly because I’m sure kids will find a way to bypass restrictions (because most these apps aren’t that good)
I’m sure, but a watch is 1000% more convenient if you don’t need any normal smart phone functionality (social media, games, internet access, media player, etc…). Its simpler to not have the option to use those features at all than to blacklist everything.
On top of that, it’s less likely to get lost or dropped/damaged like a flip phone. Probably has better battery life too. For small form-factor messaging + GPS its the most functional package.
You obviously don’t have kids. I gave them crappy Minecraft watches that had a couple games on it, and they were glued to them for hours at a time. It became a pretty big problem because they were staying up late.
Just imagine what they could do with a more capable device that can talk w/ friends.
Unless your kid, I don’t know, takes it off for some reason and leaves it at school over the weekend. Hypothetical, of course. Hasn’t happened to me once… or 4 times even.
Difference is the school isn’t going to confiscate my kid’s watch (yet)
I think the not losing it and easy to carry thing is the key point. If they have to at least keep it in a backpack pocket fine, but if it has any whiff of something distracting to do on it, many kids will get distracted.
Mine have not hit that age yet so I still have time to form my opinions and be informed. As someone who likes small compact things I can’t lose, a watch sounds ideal.
Honestly I would love a watch for myself that would replace a smartphone but it would be even better for kids.
Garmin makes them and have a relatively good privacy policy and track record but it would be even better if we didn’t need to trust them.
The image here is My First Fone. For Android it has terrible notifications. I’m constantly missing messages and calls from my kid.
My kid’s been walking to/from school and roaming the neighborhood since he was 7. Apple Watch FTW. It has its legit uses.
You know there are cheaper watches that do the same thing right
Name three.
“I’m going to strap a $700 watch to this $15K bag of organs, as a tip”
Just the tip, I promise
Really moronic take.
Somebody doesn’t have a sense of humor it seems
You’re joking, obtusely, about abduction and murder of children. You expect people to be amused?
Yes. Get used to it, we live in hell, black comedy is just about all we have left to bring some levity to the situation.
I get it. I’d bet the other commenters don’t have kids. There’s hypothetical jokes about kids, then there’s jokes to someone about their actual kid. Commenting on a post VS replying to this person who has a kid.
I grew up with a very paranoid father. Somehow this guy has a stack of rough city survival stories but I couldn’t leave the suburban block. I don’t know the best way to raise a kid, but a watch and more freedom to roam sounds nice.
I have a kid. She turns 18 in September. I thought it was funny.
I also still make jokes about my mom, and she is now sitting on top of a shelf at Dad’s house as of a few months ago.
Black comedy/gallows humor is a thing.
You don’t need to be so uptight. Nobody’s actually advocating for the murder of children here.
This is the internet. Some people will. Probably a lot. Do you expect everybody to have your exact same sensibles and kind of humor?
It’s a technology sub and I’ve been around long enough to know this is where the morons of the internet hang out but not everyone is as aware of the pattern.
I think it’s funny.
Sure, normalizing paranoia is very funny and definitely doesn’t have any real world negative consequences. Har-de-har-har.
If the neighborhood is safe for a 7 year old without an Apple watch, go ahead. If it’s but the case and they think the watch will make a difference… That’s negligence.
Sounds like something the secret government cabal would say.
Mine too. I gave them a cheap Casio and told them what time to be home, and they come home on time. If they don’t, they know they’re getting consequences, like not being allowed to go out on their own.
They know to not talk to strangers, and they know our phone numbers and address. They’re fine.
Gotta make sure they have an
ankle monitorsmart watch!A smartwatch seems like an interesting way to keep in touch with your kid/keep track of them. I guess it could be abused like anything else though.
Why do you need to keep track of your kid? Are you ever in a situation where you don’t know exactly where they are and for some reason need to?
My kids know where they can go, when they need to check in, and what time they need to be home. They know my phone number and can call me using a trusted adult’s phone. It’s really not an issue.
We were all kids once. You know as well as anyone that kids bullshit their parents all the time. Just because your kid might tell you where they’re going, doesn’t mean that’s where they’re going.
Sure, and that’s how they learn. When I catch them (and I have), they lose my trust, which means losing privileges for a time until that’s rebuilt.
My kid took a bike outside of the agreed area, so I took the bike away (partially disassembled) until they rebuilt my trust. A week or so later, I put it back together and told them I’m going to trust them again, and it hasn’t been a problem since. I didn’t put a tracker on the bike or anything, but they now know I’m serious about consequences. I’ve since expanded the area they’re allowed to go because they’ve earned my trust, and they’ve asked when they want to go outside the area (I usually say yes). I explain why the rules exist, and I’m pretty reasonable about being flexible.
I’d much rather they learn that when they’re young instead of getting used to working around filters and whatnot. Teach them discipline and consequences of making poor choices, if you keep the training wheels on too long, they’ll never develop it.
I’ll reply to you once, because i feel it needs to be said.
Other people, have other lives, in other places, with different kids. That gives them a different situation to yours. The fact that you and yours can/can’t do a thing doesn’t mean others can/cant.
Thank you
Fair.
I can only speak for my situation and my kids, and compare that to what I see in articles. I also can’t help but look at the stats and see rising rates of depression and whatnot that seems highly correlated to the proliferation of “helicopter parenting” and social media, which tug kids in opposite directions.
So I’ll speak up about my experience, which I think is a practical alternative to what I see on social media being pushed by groups selling products that feed on FUD.
And that’s also very fair, i tend to agree with you where parenting is more educating than helicoptering.
However cities are different, countries are different, norms even, and what might work in Paris, might not work in Dallas, or in Helsinki.
Also some kids might enjoy having the ability to talk to their parents and don’t see it as an infringement on their freedom, because it’s also how you act on the information you’re given. Others might not. You might even change your opinion if your circumstances change too.
I’d say, had you said - for my particular situation - I wouldn’t have batted an eye.
All that said, kids making mistakes and being kept far from monitoring and social media is a good thing 🤓
And thank you for being cool about this 🤩
some kids might enjoy having the ability to talk to their parents
Sure, and if that’s what they want, I don’t see an issue with it. I’m not saying phones/smart watches are bad, I’m saying that the reasons so many people get them (to track their kids) are bad.
A parent/child relationship should be based on trust, and that goes both ways. Remember, we’re not raising them to just shift subservience to you onto some other entity (e.g. government), we’re raising kids to think and act on their own, and they need some level of independence for that to happen. They’ll fail, and hopefully the consequences are severe enough to teach them before failure has more severe consequences.
If they’re always tethered to their parents via some tracking device, when will that happen? If they never take off the training wheels or mommy/daddy always catches them before they fall, when will they learn on ride on their own?
Fail early, and fail often. That’s how we learn, and we shouldn’t rob our kids of that.
I’d say, had you said - for my particular situation
That should go without saying for any opinion.
That said, people are generally pretty similar from place to place. Some of the nicest people live in some of the worst places. Kids aren’t randomly getting molested in back alleys, most of that happens with family members and close relatives.
Instead of tracking them, consider teaching them what to look out for. Generally speaking, if they keep to themselves and stay with friends, people will leave them alone. Criminals just don’t want to mess with kids.
And thank you for being cool about this 🤩
You too. 😁
Bruh I don’t even have a kid yet. Also, this could be for peace of mind if the kid is in a position where they can’t ask for help from someone else.
When you do, I hope your opinion changes because:
- A kid should never be in that position
- If they are, a phone isn’t going to help
- There’s a decent chance the phone got them into that situation (e.g. chatting with predators online)
So I reject the premise. If a kid isn’t safe without a phone, adding a phone won’t make them more safe.
We went talking about a phone we were talking about a smartwatch…
Change “phone” to “smart watch” and my point stands.
My nephew has one and I kind of love getting random “have you seen cheetozard” messages from him.
What is that lol
That’s amazing. I want to have that kind of relationship with my future kids/nieces/nephews.
I don’t want kids of my own but being an uncle definitely rocks
I stopped smoking cigarettes. I’ve moved on to cigars.
I did that once.
Then the cancer set in
I did the cigar thing for about a year. After that I went to a pack of cigarettes a month. About a year of that and I finally quit. I smoked for about fifteen years but I haven’t smoked tobacco in over fifteen years.
Good job, that isn’t an easy task
I mean you say that as a joke but cigars you don’t usually inhale into your lungs. Like you’re still at risk of mouth cancer, but if you switched from Cigarettes to cigars, you wouldn’t suffer the myriad of negative health effects that comes with being a cigarette smoker which would objectively be a huge improvement.
Wait you’re not supposed to inhale cigar smoke into your lungs? How do you get high from those then?
Lmao
Moving to cigars first actually helped my father quit smoking completely
We do this, 2 timex family family connect watches, the older green ones off eBay. It’s perfect and it opened up the privilege of walking home from school, walking to the park, and walking to friends houses as long as they keep it charged and check in. The newer ones look like an apple watch which I felt made them a theft target but the old ones have changed the family’s life. Then, we can ask them to do chores when they get home from school, and if they do, they can ask us to unlock tablet.
Why are parents so desperate to track their kids? Don’t they trust them?
We had a problem with our oldest not coming home on time. So we asked them, and they didn’t have a way to keep track of time. So we got them a cheap Casio and the problem is solved. They love the watch, and independence, and trust.
When we give our kids a phone, it won’t have any restrictions, because it means we trust them. We don’t, so we’re holding off. I’m unwilling to spy on them, so they’ll get a phone when I trust them without filters.
Good god, that makes too much sense! Away with you, we need to implant tracking devices in our offspring and I’ll hear nothing else on the matter
You seem like a great parent! I’m personally leaning towards giving them dumb phones once they have to take public transport to school, for the convenience of them being able to inform me when they miss the bus or want to have lunch at a friend’s. But who knows if or when I’ll even have kids, lol. Maybe things will change in that time.
Yeah, that’s my take as well. When they need one, we’ll start simple. If they do well with that, we’ll expand to a smartphone, again, when they need it (maps and whatnot).
Right now, my kids don’t need it since we take them to/from school (charter school), but the oldest will be changing schools soon to the local public school, so they may need one for after school activities. I’m not giving them something because their friends have it (theirs do), I’ll give them something because they need/earned it.
I used to miss the bus all the time before having a phone. But it didn’t matter; I wasn’t going to be late for anything, I just had to figure out another way home, usually walking which took about 45 to an hour.
If I wanted to go to a friend’s house, I’d usually just go to their house and then call using their phone.
Kids need trust. They don’t mature without room to fuck up or succeed
Exactly! And they will screw up, so it’s important to let them fail frequently while the stakes are low instead of putting it off until the stakes are high.
True. It ends up building resentment and delaying maturity
I trust my kids. I don’t trust random weirdos that hang around schools though
What are you worried those “random weirdos” are going to do? I also haven’t seen those weirdos that you claim are so ubiquitous, the people who hang around schools are kids who go there.
A “random weirdo” doesn’t want anything to do with your kids. If you look at the stats, the vast majority of crimes against children are from family members or close friends, as in, the people who would be texting your child on their phone/watch.
I also haven’t seen those weirdos that you claim are so ubiquitous, the people who hang around schools are kids who go there.
Well look at you, Mr. Anecdote!
Now I’m worried that you think my kids go to the same school as your kids. Or City. Or Country. Hell, even continent
If I was legitimately worried about wierdos hanging around my kids’ school, I’d move them to a different school. Giving them a phone or smart watch won’t fix that problem.
I get that but most people can’t just move to a better neighborhood.
There is a fake moral panic about kidnapping or whatever, but some schools really are not as safe as others unfortunately, or are in more dangerous areas. People aren’t usually targeting kids but they might get caught in the crossfire :/
Sure, I absolutely get that. I just don’t think there’s as big of an intersection between people who give their kids smartphones and smart watches and people who live in crappy areas as there is with helicopter suburban parents. I also don’t see phones and smart watches as safety devices, at least for kids under 14 or so (that’s when they go out on their own more).
The manufacturers of these devices lean hard into FUD targeted mostly at mostly at those who with means, as in lower middle class and up. That same group is plagued with depression and suicide, and I think the proliferation of these devices is a big part of the problem. If you don’t have the latest gadget or aren’t on the popular SM app 24/7, you’re “left out.” But itf you are, there’s a good chance you’ll be cyber-bullied or even targeted by criminals.
So that’s why I reject the premise. In the majority of cases, smart phones and watches don’t make you safer, they arguably increase risk, and they’re expensive to boot.
Instead of opening my kids up to that, I prefer to be the “bad guy” and say no until my kids earn that privilege. And they earn it by showing that they’ll come to us with problems, because that’ll be necessary when they run into problems on these devices. If they haven’t earned my trust, they can borrow a loaner phone when they need it.
The safety thing is just an excuse. The vast majority of people could move if they needed to, just look at first generation immigrants living on nothing just to afford rent in a good school district so their kids can have a better future than them. Those were my friends growing up.
We hard disagree on that last point. Some people can’t move for various reasons.
I grew up without a phone, so I get the benefits of learning to be independent. I also got myself a Google voice number at a young age so I wouldn’t be left out of friend groups because of not having a phone. It really is ostracizing, and back then it wasn’t as bad as it is today.
I also think the safety concerns are way overblown and what some parents really want is to know their kids’ locations at all times and be able to talk to them at all times. I’m not a parent so I can’t judge, but that’s not how I grew up, and I’m not sure it’s good for kids or parents to be that connected.
I grew up in Suburban hell but I also don’t recall that being a thing that existed in my time or place, then again everything so isolated I wouldn’t have noticed even if that was a thing. Don’t let corporations continue to destroy our communities by selling fear
Yeah right. I’m going to try every spy trick in the book so they learn some goddamn common sense.
And they’ll just learn they can’t trust you. So instead of coming to you when they have a problem, they’ll go to someone else, probably online. That sounds way worse than them failing and coming to you for help.
I mean, I’m just going to do it as a dad joke, like set their background as my face so they learn to lock their device.
Lol, ok that would be funny. But if it’s completely under your control, that novelty would wear off quickly and they’d quickly stop trusting you.
I’m already teaching mine to hide his tracks better, to only steal from companies if you have to and can get away with it, not neighbors or your avg person who worked hard for their stuff.
As someone who’s 23 and grew up with smartphones and all of that as they were starting to become popular I feel like I have some takes on a lot of the opinions I’ve seen on the different sides of issues like this. I lean in general towards giving your kid a phone once they’re old enough to want to be able to talk with friends and do things on their own afterschool but having some non-intrusive ways to keep an eye on what they’re doing with it until sometime when they’re a teenager. That just seems like the best way to not ostracize them from other kids while still making sure they’re being safe online. Even though in general things worked out fine for me with my parents letting me have my own laptop and iPod touch and eventually iPhone from a pretty young age without really watching what I did on them I definitely see a lot of times that I could have ended up being taken advantage of online if things had been slightly different. And the reason I say non-intrusive ways to keep track of what your kid is doing is because I knew kids who did have like parental restrictions on their phones and all of them knew ways to bypass them and do what they wanted to do anyways. So the only way you’re gonna successfully keep an eye on them is if they don’t know you are and you only interfere if it’s a genuine safety problem, and even then you make sure to not punish them for it as that will make them start hiding things from you actively, you treat it as a learning moment and help them understand why what they were doing wasn’t safe. I’m still very much figuring out what my exact views on this are but I think leaning too far in either direction of not letting them have social media or a smartphone at all even when they’re starting to reach middle school or letting them have unrestricted access to social media and a phone both have their problems and you have to find a good balance in the middle.
I think there’s evidence that the ostracism from not being with peers (on phones, etc,) is worse than whatever benefit is gained by waiting until later.
I feel like it can’t be harmful for a parent to limit how much time they can spend on a phone though, but maybe I’m out of touch.
Parents should be involved in their kids lives enough to look at some things together with them on the phone but IDK how much people have time for that…
I’m sure it works in theory but wearing that for however long sounds a bit much. Now, is it a good idea? That’s a whole another can of worms.
Reasonable point, but people have worn watches all day for centuries. Just clean then and rotate wrists.
Something that big and heavy on a kid’s arm is going to get uncomfortable after like ten minutes.
One watch, the Garmin Bounce, weights 37.2 g. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/714945#specs
Hardly heavy.
I have a Pixel Watch that’s about that size (36g IIRC), and I don’t like wearing it, and I’m a grown adult.
I got my kids cheap Casios, and they’re like 20g. Way better.
That’s not so bad. I was looking at the picture in the article. That thing is enormous compared to the kid’s arm.
Understandable, the watch is the photo does appear large. Kid’s arms are tiny.
My kid has it in their schoolbag, just wears it on the way home and later if they go out. They don’t have to wear it all the time.
Well I certainly understand the pros of this but is training your kid to have a dopamine response everytime a notification comes in and buzzes their arm is dangerous, no? It’s like training the kid to always want that feeling for the rest of their life
