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

nytimes.com

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

#21

Post by astorsnk »

mrmincent wrote: post #16

As a parent of a 15 month old I can absolutely see myself giving them a smart watch instead of a smart phone for keeping in touch when they start school, but I don’t think it’ll be an Apple Watch. I’d want something cheaper and less capable, and preferably made for kids.

> for keeping in touch when they start school

Do you mean generally once they’re school aged or while at school? I can’t see a reason a child at school would need to keep in touch with parents while at school. I don’t think I had to call home ever in 14 years of schooling.

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

#22

Post by smcl »

kramerger wrote: post #3

As is it was not hard enough to remember to charge your own watch every day...

This was honestly the opinion I had for a long time - I held out because the idea of yet another device that need charged annoyed me. Then I started running again and decided to give the apple watch a go, and the charging is surprisingly a non-issue. I take it off before I go to bed and put it on the little charger on my nightstand, and tbh I sometimes see my phone light up with a notification saying that it's fully charged before I've made it to sleep.

There are a few things I'd definitely like to change or tweak[0] but overall I'm surprised how it's become a normal part of my life.

[0] here are the top-of-the head things

- message notifications seem to behave like the device has extremely low resources, so messages (FB messenger) longer than something like 140 chars are truncated and I have to read them on my phone

- when you click a notification that someone sent a picture (through, say, FB messenger) it'll show a full screen image of the person who sent the picture ... not of the actual picture

- syncing up with a friend over walkie talkie or fitness is extremely flakey. I connected with 2 friends for the fitness, and never managed to get the walkie talkie working no matter how much troubleshooting I did

- if i'm listening to music from my watch on my airpods (another bit of kit i hated the idea of but have grown to tolerate) on a run while leaving my phone at home, the music will suddenly cut out from the watch when I return and get in range of my iphone

- as a dev I'd like to fiddle more with it and create watch faces, but as it stands you can only create complications for existing faces

- I have no idea how Apple calculate their VO2 max estimation. It seems utterly random, I've seen mine shoot up during periods when I've been inactive, and I've seen triathlete friends report that they're "below-average" fitness. I feel like I could hand my watch over to an Olympic athlete for a competition and it’d still report mine as 49.6 afterwards

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

#23

Post by realce »

eimrine wrote: post #7
cknoxrun wrote: post #2

Interesting. I've often considered an Apple Watch for my 9 year old, who struggles with (and benefits from) ADHD and thus would benefit from specific features such as the reminders (especially location-specific), alarms, and overall organization capabilities. But I'm hesitant to open that box just yet... He isn't pining for a smart phone yet, nor do his friends seem to generally own them, so that wouldn't be the moti…

How a location-specific reminders will help the 9 year old ADHD and what org capabilities such a young person might need?

As someone who also has ADHD, reminders without actual motivation is just a function to create shame and anxiety. Every reminder sheet I had in school just felt like more work I couldn't complete.

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

#25

Post by vagrantJin »

altacc wrote: post #11

This is a great idea, because I'll be able to snag a free Apple watch ;) I regularly have phone watches left at our house by my children's friends and if you walk through the school after hours you'll occasionally find one lying on the floor (in amongst all the discarded clothes). They're too big for active children to want to keep on all day. I can see why this would benefit some people, if their children have long…

> their children have long solo commutes,

The same people who'd want to track their kid's every move with an absurdly expensive watch can also turn around and let that same kid commute solo?

My brains turnng to mush.

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

#27

Post by jhanschoo »

astorsnk wrote: post #21
mrmincent wrote: post #16

As a parent of a 15 month old I can absolutely see myself giving them a smart watch instead of a smart phone for keeping in touch when they start school, but I don’t think it’ll be an Apple Watch. I’d want something cheaper and less capable, and preferably made for kids.

> for keeping in touch when they start school Do you mean generally once they’re school aged or while at school? I can’t see a reason a child at school would need to keep in touch with parents while at school. I don’t think I had to call home ever in 14 years of schooling.

A couple decades ago many didn't see many didn't see much use for connecting with people over the Internet either.

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

#28

Post by ceejayoz »

vagrantJin wrote: post #25
altacc wrote: post #11

This is a great idea, because I'll be able to snag a free Apple watch ;) I regularly have phone watches left at our house by my children's friends and if you walk through the school after hours you'll occasionally find one lying on the floor (in amongst all the discarded clothes). They're too big for active children to want to keep on all day. I can see why this would benefit some people, if their children have long…

> their children have long solo commutes, The same people who'd want to track their kid's every move with an absurdly expensive watch can also turn around and let that same kid commute solo? My brains turnng to mush.

I'm not sure why that's so surprising.

I want my kids to develop independenence, but also be able to find them in an emergency.

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

#29

Post by rswerve »

This has worked really well for us. My kids are 11 and 9 and we started with Gizmo watches a couple of years ago, and got them Apple Watches this year (one hand-me-down, one SE). Their friends are starting to get phones, and we're a hard no on phones for kids, but this way they can keep in touch with us and their friends without a phone.

The effect on independence has been interesting. They seem to feel more reassured about venturing farther afield, so they've been riding bikes to shops and restaurants and their friends' houses much more frequently than they did before. (Of course, before they were also younger and there was more covid, but their calls to check in tell me that they like being able to ask a question or keep us up to date on their plans.)

As for durability, I got some chunky hard cases for the watches and there have been no issues. You can also get the "solo loop" band, so they don't have to deal with clasps, and the watches never fall off.

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

#30

Post by powersurge360 »

cknoxrun wrote: post #2

Interesting. I've often considered an Apple Watch for my 9 year old, who struggles with (and benefits from) ADHD and thus would benefit from specific features such as the reminders (especially location-specific), alarms, and overall organization capabilities. But I'm hesitant to open that box just yet... He isn't pining for a smart phone yet, nor do his friends seem to generally own them, so that wouldn't be the moti…

I also have a 9 year old w/ ADHD and tried this with the reminders and he just turns them off lol.

It's been great for other things though. Facilitating social connections w/ friends (the cellular watch gets its own number) and the walkie talkie feature is awesome for when he needs to quickly check in for an opinion or if I need for him to come home and don't want to stand on my back porch and yell generally into the neighborhood like a maniac. There even was a mildly scary time this summer where his summer camp called us and said they wanted to confirm we got him early (we hadn't). We were able to shoot them a screenshot of his location data and politely ask them to get it together and they found him swinging on a tire swing at the edge of the camp.

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