Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/30/google-pitches-a-surveillance-forward-kids-smartwatch-to-parents.html
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The Fitbit Ace LTE is $230 and requires a $10 monthly subscription.
And here we have late-stage tech-bro capitalism at its zenith. A subscription to tell the fucking time.
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I’m not quite sure when the shift occurred; but the move to more surveillance as an alternative to developing the ability to self-soothe does not seem like a healthy development.
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I actually am the target demographic for this.
Our 11-year-old is old enough to be moving independently around our medium-sized city near Boston. She walks to places within about a 5-block radius of our house, and rides the city bus with a classmate to a dance class about two miles away.
We feel quite comfortable letting her do this without any form of phone, but as she’s starting to make her own plans (“oh, I walked a friend home from school”) we want her to be able to keep us in the loop. She also wants to be able to independently plan to meet a friend. We’re all for independence as it relates to doing actual things in the outside world.
Smart phones are right out for us. A flip phone was our plan for a while, but it seems like it just won’t work – can’t communicate well in group messages, and almost all “flip phones” nowadays actually have web browsers and stuff anyway.
Watches seem like a good solution, but most of the Android ones seem like crap. We don’t have iPhones so can’t do Apple watch.
Anyway, point being there are reasons to give a kid a smart watch besides surveillance, which is not something we’re looking for. (Also we’re not looking for any “fitness” crap from Fitbit.)
If anyone has similar-aged kids, they could share what worked for them.
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I’m sure a lot of these watches are going to go on interesting journeys apart from the kids they’re tracking.
It’s also worth keeping on mind that kids, along with prisoners and low-status workers, are usually a test market in Cory Doctorow’s “sh*tty technology adoption curve.” Coming soon to you…?
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We have an 11 year old as well, similar situation (though our location technically has a law on the books against anyone under the age of 12 being about on their own).
Google is behind the curve a bit on this, the Garmin Bounce has been around for a while and does pretty much the same thing (not sure if it has NFC), also requires a data subscription. It is cheaper than the Google one. We got this for our kid as a way of communicating as it allows texts and voice recordings. I’m still torn about the necessity of it, but lean toward it being a bit much. After enjoying the gamified movement aspect, he’s lost interest in that. The messaging has been nice to communicate about afterschool plans, but it feels like a lot to be spending on a watch that can text. But, my partner is a bit more worried than I, and it gives them peace of mind.
According to the link above, Garmin is one of the better ones for privacy, though the risks of a connected device will never be fully eliminated.
As with anything parenting related, any decision seems to come with plenty of judgement from the outside world. When I was 11, the expectation was that I’d check in with my parents to let them know where I was going and had to be home for dinner time (unless I was cleared to have dinner at a friend’s). This is more or less where we’ve landed as parents. Some kids had more freedom, some had less. Most people I grew up with turned into reasonably well adjusted adults, regardless.
Personally, the watch is only an intrusive surveillance tool if you want to use it as such. We don’t track our kid’s every movement, but also have an idea of where they are during the day. Every kid is different, every parent is different, I think the only way to come up with a solution that everyone is comfortable with is to talk about it with your kid and see. Maybe your kid wants the security of knowing they can contact you whenever they need to?
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Ugh. Legislated helicopter parenting.
Have you considered advocating for a change in the laws? LetGrow has a Legislative Toolkit for helping parents fight these laws and propose better ones.
Thanks for the tip on the watch, will read on it.
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Canadian jurisdicton, so not sure the toolkit would help but will have a look!
I’ve never heard of anyone being prosecuted for it, but there have been busybodies complaining on facebook about unleashed tweens roaming the neighbourhood as well. Thankfully there isn’t a nextdoor group (that I’m aware of at least…).
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So, even being out in the street playing would be a technical infringement? How to kill childhood and force them all to stay indoors with screens. That’s some fuckwitted legislation if that’s what it says. Having said that, it is not legal to leave a child under 12 alone in the home, AFAIRecall, in UK. 
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So if they’re alone they’re required to be on the street?
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Makes no sense to me, either.
(‘Get off my lawn’ alert: When I was a kid I recall being out all day from the time I got my first full-size bike - probably around 10 years old. And the bike was definitely bought for me to grow into!)
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If we must:
Way back in the dark ages, we left home after breakfast, ate lunch at whichever friend’s house we were closest to, and came home when the streetlights came on. We got into adventures that my parents still don’t know about. And never will! But, times change, I guess.
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Parental helicoptering aside, is it really a good idea to pay a tech company to keep track of your kid’s habits?
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Of course, the answer today is “yes, I checked their phone location. Unless they’ve turned off location services.”
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The communication application their friend group, team sports, school, clubs, and other organized activities use is going to be a larger driver of the phone options.
While the “kids device, needs both a parent and kid account for under 13” is definitely a market and the age is part of law. It’s not really a useful age cutoff.
We had a Fitbit ACE for a kid, for the fitness tracking and watch (that’s all it did, no tracking). For their 12th birthday, they wanted an upgrade to a more functional one. This created a year long question then. To ditch all the prior data, create a new account, and lie about their birthday. Or, to wait until they turned 13 and upgrade then. A peril of entering their real birthday the first time, instead of 1/1/2000 that the kids used so much more often. In the end, they waited.
These kid focused limited use devices might be useful for younger kids, elementary aged. However, they’ll start to outgrow them by 5th grade, maybe 6th if you try to really stretch it. By 7th grade, this type of restricted device will be the outlier and exclude them from peer activities. Somewhere in that 5,6,7th grade range, they’ll have use of Chromebooks, tablets, or other WiFi not cellular devices and begin to communicate using those.
We waited until 7th grade started to get our kids phones, and they were definitely in the minority.
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The legislation itself does not specify whether it’s in the home. It just says that children under 12 can’t be left unsupervised. That said, my child and many others walks to and from school unsupervised every day 
. It seems to hinge on what unsupervised means I guess. We’re also one of only three provinces in Canada to have a minimum age (though Ontario’s is 16(!)).
A lot is up to a judge’s discretion ultimately, and the legislation provides for children having the necessary maturity and skill to be alone. Of course, the only way to get there is through progressively increasing opportunities for independence and responsibility.
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I got my younger kids the SyncUP Kids Watch from T-Mobile. I had some success with the 11 year old… he often wore it. It was often helpful to communicate with him, and although I don’t think I ever used the location tracking feature it was comforting to have it at least theoretically available. He also used the pedometer.
The 13 year old decided not to participate.
Overall I don’t recommend these devices strongly. The 11 year old broke his and getting a replacement was a real ordeal. They absolutely require charging every night. And there were enough glitchy “time to reboot the watch” things that it wasn’t really safe to consider them appliances quality-wise.
We got our 15 year old a Samsung smartwatch. That was also helpful in terms of being able to contact each other. But there’s no location tracking available and he often played games and such on his watch. Battery life was even worse than the SyncUP. And using the watch without a phone was weird. I had to install the app and sync with my phone. The watch ecosystem clearly isn’t designed for this use case.
Overall we got some utility from 2/3 kids with smart watches. Was it worth the $10 or $15/month per unit plus purchase price? shrug
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We got our 7 year old (then six) a Ticktalk watch. Incredibly locked down device with a lot of control for the parent/controlling account. No games, some fitness tracking, texting only with people who have the app and the controlling account granted permission to. Calling only to and from numbers the controlling account approved.
The kid likes it because of the security of being able to call or text us and ask to be picked up late or, on one very memorable occasion, very early. Kii-kitten can be a bit anxious and the watch seems to help. They like being able to just call me and ask where I stashed the laser pointer instead of finding their dad to call or text.
They know it tracks their location and are fine with that. They ask me sometimes if I checked on them during the day. Apparently doing so is an expression of love to them and not a way to soothe my irrational anxiety.
It’s rough connecting with any friends, due to how locked down the watch is. But we don’t need that for our kid’s socializing just yet. But the watch is good training. They don’t mess with it in class. They got over texting us endless emojis very quickly.
We’ve been pleased with the Ticktalk. I wouldn’t get this Google thing or any of the others that allow gaming or purchases (srsly, wtf?!). The smart phone will happen eventually 
probably with a lot of restrictions at first, slowly eased off.
I don’t get the shade cast on parents who want location info on their kids who aren’t full-fledged teenagers. As long as the kid is aware, it doesn’t seem restrictive to me. Knowing I can look up where they are has allowed me to let them go a lot of places I’d have been really anxious about. Again, a me problem. But I don’t think it is damaging to my child.
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I’ve gone back and forth on this a bunch. In a way, location tracking can give kids more freedom, especially if you’re a more cautious parent who would otherwise be nervous about letting them have that freedom.
On the other hand, I do believe that there is something in the sense of freedom or independence to a kid knowing that their parents does not know where they are. I think it does foster a sense of responsibility and growth.
But I won’t shame any parent for it, being unsure myself. (Unless that parent is snooping on their kid without telling them, which is a different matter.)
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Our daughter was born in 1985.
This is how I tracked her.
Where are you going and with who?
She told me and then I would randomly show up and check to see if she was there and who she was with.
I would never intrude, I would just check if she was where she said she was going to be.
Didn’t take long to earn our trust and by the time she was 16 she was free to go where she wanted with her friends.
That being said, if I had a youngster today I would use available tech to track them but not for checking up on them or snooping, I’d use it for actually locating them if worse case scenario happened.
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