General

Don’t do it. The adult ones are too overwhelming and the kids ones are trash.

I can’t tell you how many kid smartwatch issues I had when I worked at T-Mobile. They wouldn’t activate, or they’d still need to be paired to a phone, or they were having issues with the parents having control even though they could get into everything. All sorts of nonsense.

I also might be biased, because smartwatches in general are stupid.

I looked into this about a year ago and basically just gave up. The Apple Watch family/parent controls seemed ok (or at least easy to control) and I liked the idea of Find My as well as the walkie-talkie feature. But then we found out the school makes kids put phones and smartwatches in a bin when in the classroom. I'm not sure if they can get them during recess or not (5th grade). So he'd only be able to wear the watch after school when we're already waiting in line to pick him up. So there was no point.

We just wanted it for emergencies but if he can't even wear it during the day it didn't have any value. We instead just stitched an apple tag into his backpack.

Ended up picking up a Gizmo 3, will be here tomorrow. $10 a month isn't horrible for peace of mind. Really like (but also super invasive) that you can just drop in and hear them. My kid is starting to play a lot more in the neighborhood and more often than not, he disappears over his friends house.

So weird that as a kid, we were gone all day every day, and no one cared. I hate that we're doing this but man, ya just don't know anymore. Not sure how about it all to be honest as I want our kids to be kids and just have fun. Feels like a neccessary evil on today's time to always know where your kiddos are.

MrBean wrote:

I bought my 10-year-old an iWatch - it's too much. The Gizmo is the right call.