Apple Watch for Your Kids

Feels like an interesting trend where a "solution" for parent anxiety (and to be fair, vastly increased societal expectations around what "care" looks like) is proposed to be electronic surveillance.

It's a kid tracker / ankle bracelet in an attractive form factor.

I was a kid in the 80s, city fringe, single parent who worked until 5:30. Honestly nobody had any idea where me & my friends were a lot of the time. Totally acceptable in that era.

The main worry I have about tech like this is, at what saturation of deployment does the norm shift such that it's irresponsible NOT to electronically track your kids whenever they leave the house?

I got one for my grade schooler and it's mostly great. She can text or call me or her mom or her grandparents (but no one else), we can know where she is, and there not too much she can play on it. It gives her a bit more freedom because she can get in touch with us to make plans or wander off out of sight but still be in touch.

I'm kind of annoyed with "schooltime" on the phone, it has a fixed (boring) watch face, it doesn't actually stop a kid from exiting schooltime, they just have to press a button and we can see if she did it in the app. It's also either on on a weekly schedule or totally off, so she has to whine at me to turn off schooltime on holidays and then it's easy to forget to turn it back on. There's also no provision for multiple family members to manage kid watches. I set up her watch so my wife can't also manage it. Also, there's no way for me to install apps. I'd really like to install Home Assistant on her watch so she can unlock doors, but...I can't. Can't be done.

Overall I'd say they built out a nice system for a while and then...stopped. I bet there's a PM at Apple that had the rest of the features all ready to go and then got moved off onto the Vision Pro or something. Every now and then they're talking to their old teammate and they sigh about what it could have been. I'll buy them a beer sometime.

i have this for both my young kids and it's great. It results in me letting them do all manner of things I wouldn't otherwise let them do because in an instant they can call me if things go sideways.

It ends up being less "tracker" and more "if they really really need me they can get me". It's win win - they get to do more, and I get to feel better.

I'd be concerned a kid would lose this. Sure it's got Find My but that only tells you where it's at, doesn't guarantee retrieveability.

Also do you need an iPhone to manage the kid's Apple Watch or can you do this with a PC (web UI somewhere? apple.com?) or Android device etc? This is very important, if they're billing it as a safety device for kids, interacting with/reading data from the safety device should NOT require a _specific model_ of separate device. I should be able to do it from anywhere.

I wanted this about six years ago… had to find a donation iPhone just to set up a child’s apple watch.

$275 for a kids watch. Even considering the extras it provides: no.

And we have an iPad Air for educational work, which get used daily. It's not about the money per se.

Additionally Apple isn't very good in proper parental controls compared to family link on Android. Abysmal at best. So, why would I buy another Apple product with probably the same bad UX for me as a parent?

Not gonna happen.

My child has an SE, and the only downside we’ve seen is that without a connected iPhone or WiFi network, the battery life is unimaginably bad. That little LTE radio works hard in the school.

I think some people are missing the point here. There is an age where it makes sense to get your kid some kind of connectivity device, but you don’t want to get them a smart phone so you either get them an over priced dumb phone or kids phone or you could get them the Apple Watch. It allows them to call you for pickup and maybe text a few friends, but is inconvenient enough they won’t sit and stare at it all day.

Honestly—I think this is a great marketing angle for Apple. (And if they didn't want to risk cannibalizing iPhone sales they could also spin it as an anti-phone addiction measure for adults as well!) More and more I'm starting to feel comfortable leaving my phone at home and using just my cellular Watch + AirPods when I'm out and about.

I'd like to see regulators deal with the bundling requirements for devices. It would serve the greater good by preventing a company the size of Apple from obligating that someone must buy an iPhone to use an Apple Watch.

250 bucks. For an 8 yo. Meh.

I see, either everything one here goes to preppy schools, in a perfect Montessori world, vs others working three jobs to pay mortgage and 2 cars.

And the solution is apple watch.

Let the kids live.. Without trackers you psychopaths

Workouts for kids? Surveillance sold as «independence»? This is dystopian stuff, a few years ago I wouldn't think of Apple to sink this deep.

The response to "Where's Erica?" should not be to put a tracking wristband on Erica. Perhaps you won't know where Erica is. Perhaps she is doing something dangerous. The oblivion and ambiguity are part of what constitutes acknowledging Erica's personhood.

I don't know what kind of games you could fit on a watch (Tamagotchi type things?), but getting kids to actually use things requires them seeing some sort of direct reward.

We bought cheapo dumb phones for our kids and they'd never remember to take them with them, but once we were forced to get them smart phones suddenly that was never a problem.

And by forced I mean the endless wearing down of the whining and crying and petulance because all their friends had smartphones. Ugh, one of many occasions where I failed as a parent.

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