Florian
Fangohr waffled for about a year over whether to buy an
Apple Watch SE as a
gift. The smartwatch cost $279, and he worried that its recipient would
immediately break or lose it. In May, he decided the benefits outweighed the
costs and bought the gadget.
اضافة اعلان
The beneficiary:
his eight-year-old son, Felix.
Fangohr, a
47-year-old product designer in Seattle, said he was aware that many people
were pessimistic about technology’s creep into children’s lives. But “within
the framework of the watch, I don’t feel scared,” he said. “I want him to
explore.”
Felix, a rising
third grader, said he actually wanted a smartphone.
Parents are
increasingly buying Apple Watches and strapping them onto the wrists of
children as young as five, across the
US. The goal: to use the devices as a
stopgap cellphone for the kids. With the watch’s cellular abilities, parents
can use it to reach, and track their children, while the miniature screens
mitigate issues like internet addiction.
Children and
teenagers appear to have become a disproportionately large market for
smartwatches as a whole. In a 2020 survey of American teenagers by the
investment bank Piper Sandler, 31 percent said they owned a smartwatch. That
same year, 21 percent of adults in the US said they owned one, according to the
Pew Research Center.
The use of
smartwatches as a children’s gadget shows how the audience for a consumer
technology product can morph in unexpected ways. It has also given new life to
the Apple Watch, which was unveiled in 2015 and has been variously positioned
as a fitness tracker, a style statement, or a way to free yourself from an
iPhone.
Apple has
deliberately turned the watch into a device that can be attractive for children
and their parents. In 2020, the company released the Apple Watch SE, which had
fewer features than a premium model and was priced $120 cheaper. Apple also
introduced Family Setup, software that let parents track their children’s
locations, manage their contacts list and limit their notifications.
The
Silicon Valley company’s moves to make the Apple Watch a child-friendly cellphone took about
three years, said two people involved with the project, who were not authorized
to speak publicly. A chief concern was battery life, since the watch used more
power when it functioned independently from an iPhone, they said.
Any technology used
by children raises questions of risks and harms. Social media platforms in
particular have faced scrutiny in recent years, with lawmakers holding
congressional hearings on the issue in 2021 and homing in on whether sites like
Instagram led to poor self-esteem among teenagers.
But smartwatches
are inherently limited in their abilities, said Jim Steyer, chief executive of
Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that reviews media and technology for families.
Since smartwatches have minimal apps and no web browser or camera, children are
less likely to be exposed to distracting games or other adult content, he said.
Not owning a smartphone also encourages children to continue learning how to do
things independently, like completing homework assignments without looking up
answers online, he said.
Still, buying a
smartwatch for children can hook them to technology early. When young people
use a product, they tend to remain loyal to the brand as they grow up and
become working professionals, analysts said.
Jon Desi and his
wife recently used an Apple Watch SE as training wheels for a smartphone for
their daughter, Catie, when she was 10. When she started playing outside more
at the beginning of the pandemic, they couldn’t find an “old-style phone” so
their daughter would have more freedom to venture around their neighborhood in
Hunt Valley, Maryland, they said. They settled on the Apple Watch instead.
“We wanted to give
her a way to communicate without giving her Pandora’s box at the age of 10,”
Desi said.
But the watch came
with a stipulation: Catie had to charge it and wear it regularly, answer when
they called and text back in a reasonable amount of time to receive a
smartphone.
It became “the
carrot to enforce responsible behaviors,” Desi said.
In July, he and
his wife purchased an iPhone for Catie, now 11, and handed her Apple Watch down
to their 10-year-old son, Tommy. When their five-year-old daughter, Ellie, is
older, they anticipate handing down the Apple Watch again.
A smartwatch is not
a guaranteed delay to a cellphone. Todd Golub and his wife, who live in New
York City, gave an Apple Watch SE to their son Ronan when he was 10, as he
began exploring the city by himself. The watch was more difficult to break and
lose than a phone, and Ronan used its mobile wallet to pay for food and public
transit.
But last fall, they bought an iPhone for Ronan, now 12, when
he entered middle school because all his schoolmates had smartphones. Golub,
49, said he would have preferred to introduce a smartphone at least a year
later but worried his son would feel like he was missing out.
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