This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Gotta make sure they have an ~~ankle monitor~~ smart 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.
My nephew has one and I kind of love getting random "have you seen cheetozard" messages from him.
This has been so good for me and my kid. If they are out and feel like they need adult help, we are a watch tap away. If they want to come home early from a friend's house, send me a code and I'm there. If they want to go to their friend's house after school, I'm a text away.
We have a no phone until you're 13 rule so while the watch is a stripped down phone, it's not a phone so easy for us all to understand, plus it's already stripped down, no hassle no fuss.
I stopped smoking cigarettes. I’ve moved on to cigars.
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?
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.
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.
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)
Parents turn to smart watches? Not in my household! Not one more fucking non Linux piece of shit spying screen more.
A modern day equivalent of "we don't own a tv"
I still say this to cable companies and other tv providers, is awesome and hilarious how they can't continue their phone sale.
Can I interest you in an IBM WatchPad? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WatchPad
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.
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.
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.
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.
The image here is My First Fone. For Android it has terrible notifications. I'm constantly missing messages and calls from my kid.
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.
My kid’s been walking to/from school and roaming the neighborhood since he was 7. Apple Watch FTW. It has its legit uses.
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.
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
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.
