DD is 9 years old and has a (non-Apple) smartwatch for us to track her whereabouts. It has a SIM, but only the people on the whitelist can call her. Parents determine who is on the whitelist via an app. I can also track where she is, and I can set map boundaries so that I get an alert if she (or the watch) moves outside the boundary. I can also set what apps are on her watch. Right now, the only capabilities I’ve allowed on her watch are to call me or her dad, to send voice messages to me or her dad, and a program that tracks the number of steps she takes each day, for which she can earn carrots to feed her ePet bunny. She only wears it when she walks next door to her friend’s house by herself or if we are going somewhere where there is a possibility that she could get lost or separated from us.
I’m in China. It’s really popular here to have your younger kid wear a smartwatch, and I prefer a watch over a phone because it’s strapped to her wrist and won’t get lost. Plus, it’s not as expensive as a phone.
Her watch is basically a dumb phone with a touchscreen.
That’s good to know that the watch is more like a flip phone or a non-smart phone with a touch screen. I will set up parental controls too. I think we also won’t wear it all the time, but only if she is going somewhere outside of school. They aren’t allowed at school. Do you think the monthly phone plan is worth it? Do you think it serves a good purpose for a few years? We thought about putting an AirTag in her bag for GPS but I thought the call/text feature was beneficial. Are you happy that you don’t only have GPS?
We get a free SIM card with our internet plan, so we don’t pay a monthly fee. It’s not absolutely necessary for us, but there have been a few occasions when it has been helpful to get a hold of her - namely when she’s at her friend’s house and we want her to come home. I’m happy we are able to call her. I like the idea of it not being your daughter’s watch, but rather, a tool to be shared amongst your kids depending on who needs it. We only have one kid, so it’s her watch, but we keep it in our room when it’s not in use, and she doesn’t see it as anything special because of its limited functionality. Apparently only being able to call your parents and track your steps is not that enticing.
My understanding is that most kids love their smartwatches because of the ability to play games, watch TikTok and YouTube videos, listen to music, and chat with their friends in group chats. Take away all of that functionality, and it becomes much easier to control usage.
It’s also much easier to buy a watch that doesn’t have those functions to begin with, than to shut the functionality off, because it’ll help avoid arguments about how you’re not being fair because so-and-so’s parents don’t have such strict controls on their watch. In our case, we just say “sorry, we just bought a watch that does what we need. It doesn’t have those extra unnecessary functions.”
We actually employ the same Mustachian concepts to purchasing this watch that we do to other purchases. We bought an older model. We bought the most basic model. We didn’t succumb to lifestyle/tech inflation by buying one with more features than we needed. She’s had it for over a year, and so far it’s worked out for us.
