As Schools Ban Phones, More Kids Are Using Smartwatches

This nonfiction was copublished with EdSurge. EdSurge is simply a nonprofit newsroom that covers acquisition done archetypal journalism and research. Sign up for its newsletters.

As Jennifer Hill’s eldest kid was heading into 5th grade, she began to wonderment however she would pass with him successful the hr betwixt his schoolhouse autobus drop-off and her accomplishment location from enactment successful downtown Cleveland.

“There’s nary telephone successful this location if thing goes wrong,” she remembers thinking. “It’s not safe.”

When Hill was a kid, determination were nary compartment phones, sure, but determination were landlines. And affable neighbors keeping an oculus out. And close-knit communities wherever everyone knew each other.

“It’s not the mode it is anymore,” she says. “I can’t ideate my kid walking up to somebody’s house, knocking connected a door, and saying, ‘My person fell disconnected his bike. Can I usage your phone?’ We thatch kids not to bash that anymore.”

She wasn’t acceptable to get her 10-year-old a smartphone, not by a agelong shot. Nor did she mean to instal a location phone. She wanted her lad to beryllium capable to thrust his motorcycle astir the vicinity successful the afternoons, too—not conscionable beryllium cooped up successful their house.

She rapidly whittled her options down to conscionable one: a smartwatch.

Hill knew of different household that had conscionable purchased their kid 1 of these high-tech wearables. Back then, successful 2018, the kid-focused options were reasonably limited, arsenic were their capabilities. Hill got her lad a Verizon Gizmo watch, which, astatine the time, had lone rudimentary features, storing up to 10 parent-approved telephone numbers and allowing the idiosyncratic to nonstop lone a fistful of preset substance messages (think: “Where are you?” and “Call me”). The smartwatch besides had immoderate elemental location-tracking capabilities.

Fast-forward six years, and Hill’s 2 oldest children, present precocious schoolers, some person graduated to smartphones. Her youngest, a 10-year-old daughter, wears a Gizmo watch, lone hers comes with each the technological advancements and upgrades accumulated implicit the anterior years: photograph and video capture, video calling, entree to a afloat keyboard for texting, dependable messaging, radical chats, geofencing, and up to 20 parent-approved telephone numbers.

Today, says George Koroneos, a spokesperson for Verizon, the smartwatch is “truly a telephone replacement connected their wrist.”

And the merchandise class is booming. A decennary ago, lone a fewer tech companies made smartwatches for kids. Today, the marketplace is bloated with players, caller and veteran, vying for kids’ and parents’ loyalty—and advertizing smartwatches to children arsenic young arsenic 5.

“They are becoming progressively popular,” says Kris Perry, enforcement manager of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. “They are becoming a child’s archetypal device.”

Families are noticing, too—after all, they’re the ones driving this “explosion,” arsenic Shelley Pasnik, erstwhile manager of the Center for Children and Technology, describes it.

Hill has seen the improvement since her archetypal ticker purchase. When her sons were younger, she says, lone a fistful of their friends and classmates had smartwatches. Now, the devices are “huge” successful her affluent suburban assemblage of Westlake, Ohio.

“With my daughter, everyone’s got them. They’re arsenic fashionable arsenic Stanleys and Owalas,” she says, referring to the colorful, reusable h2o bottles that children person helped popularize. “All the small girls person watches.”

Kids clamoring for their archetypal integer instrumentality are easy winning implicit adults who, let’s look it, aren’t putting up overmuch of a combat successful the archetypal place, erstwhile always-on connection and precise location-tracking are portion of the bundle that comes with modern parenting.

In fact, genitor fears whitethorn beryllium the existent unit propelling smartwatch proliferation.

T-Mobile, which makes the SyncUp watch, conducted a user insights survey and recovered that 92 percent of parents of children ages 4 done 12 felt it was important to “always cognize wherever their kid was,” says Clint Patterson, elder vice president of merchandise selling astatine T-Mobile.

Today’s tools marque specified tracking possible.

“The mode that parents show their kids has changed dramatically successful conscionable a procreation oregon two,” says Mitch Prinstein, main subject serviceman astatine the American Psychological Association. “Parents are monitoring their kids acold much closely, truly wanting to beryllium alert of their determination [and] acrophobic astir their safety.”

This heightened surveillance has trade-offs. The inclination has seeped into schools, wherever teachers and leaders person grown frustrated by the instauration of yet different integer distraction to students’ learning, adjacent arsenic much districts enact cell-phone bans.

Yet nary 1 truly knows wherever these gadgets acceptable into the larger speech astir children and screens. Research connected kids and smartwatches is thin. Even information astir adoption and usage is lacking. This has near integer media and kid improvement experts to extrapolate and hypothesize astir the imaginable pitfalls and benefits.

“If this is simply a mode of parents oregon kids achieving their goals and delaying their kids connected societal media, this mightiness not beryllium specified a atrocious thing,” says Prinstein, who codirects the Winston National Center connected Technology Use, Brain, and Psychological Development and whose probe focuses connected adolescents and younger children.

“On the different hand,” Prinstein adds, “we don’t person a batch of probe yet. It’s imaginable determination are ways successful which smartwatches are creating an physics umbilical cord. That has imaginable risks arsenic well.”

Technology “Training Wheels”

When the Apple Watch was released successful 2015, it was seen—and priced—as a luxury good, notes Girard Kelly, the caput of privateness astatine Common Sense Media.

It was also, backmost then, marketed to adults. But arsenic caller generations of the Apple Watch came out, immoderate parents handed down older models to their children, says Pasnik of the Center for Children and Technology.

“Naturally, kids similar to bash things adults are doing,” says Jon Watkins, elder merchandise manager for Bounce, a kid-focused smartwatch made by Garmin. “There’s a earthy inclination for kids to privation a ticker similar they spot Mom and Dad wearing.”

Noting the trend—and successful immoderate cases, helping to turn it—other companies began to merchandise kid-specific smartwatches with much limitations than an big device. Apple, too, released a version, the Apple Watch SE, successful 2020, with restricted features and a little price.

Around that time, request for kids’ smartwatches spiked, says Perry of Children and Screens. Educators, too, enactment a bump successful adoption astir the pandemic—one that has been sustained successful the years since. The smartwatch marketplace for kids is estimated to beryllium worthy more than $1 billion successful 2024—and it’s growing rapidly, Perry adds.

A emblematic kids’ smartwatch contiguous costs astir $150 up front, positive an ongoing monthly subscription interest of $10 to $15. That’s surely nary battalion of bubble gum, but it does enactment the instrumentality wrong scope for galore families, peculiarly those who presumption the merchandise arsenic 1 that enhances their child’s safety, says Kelly of Common Sense.

“Parents are, like, halfway successful betwixt giving their kid oregon teen a phone, and the ticker makes sense,” helium says. “It’s cheaper.”

To adults feeling unit to present their kids to technology, a smartwatch whitethorn consciousness similar a safer starting constituent than a cell-phone that grants vulnerability to the full internet, argues Kelly’s workfellow Laura Ordoñez, enforcement exertion and caput of integer media household proposal astatine Common Sense.

“What is the low-hanging effect that doesn’t consciousness similar it’s doing the astir damage?” Ordoñez asks. “I judge that’s what’s motivating these parents.”

Numerous radical cited societal scientist Jonathan Haidt’s caller book, The Anxious Generation, successful interviews, noting the harm that smartphones and societal media whitethorn beryllium causing young people. Most smartwatches don’t person web browsers oregon societal media applications. That successful itself gives galore parents an tremendous consciousness of relief.

“Parents are progressively alert of the problematic designs of smartphones and the troubling information connected societal media apps,” says Perry. “They privation the connection, but they don’t privation their kid scrolling and online constantly.”

As the terms of kids’ smartwatches has travel down, though, it whitethorn person muddled however the wearable fits into a family’s wide exertion goals. What started arsenic a consolation prize offered to an older preteen oregon young teen who craves technology, communication, and societal inclusion has evolved into a benignant of gateway device. Like bowling with bumpers.

“It’s a large mode to easiness into tech,” says Hill, the Ohio parent. “You tin larn to instrumentality attraction of the exertion successful a tiny mode earlier you are fixed it successful a bigger way.”

That seems to beryllium however the smartwatch makers presumption it, too. In interviews with executives astatine Verizon, Garmin, and T-Mobile, they picture their people users arsenic ages 5 to 12, with the halfway lawsuit basal arsenic parents of 8- to 10-year-olds.

“This is simply a precise harmless mode to person a means of connection with a child,” claims Watkins of Garmin.

Patterson, astatine T-Mobile, describes kids’ smartwatches arsenic “training wheels successful the adoption of technology.”

“Just similar you wouldn’t propulsion your kid connected a bicycle, you don’t propulsion them astatine a smartphone oregon tablet with unfettered access,” Patterson adds.

What precisely are these grooming wheels preparing kids for? The bicycle metaphor suggests that someday, children volition beryllium allowed to zoom disconnected connected their own, liberated from their parents’ purview.

Yet untethering is not the trajectory families look to person successful caput erstwhile they bargain their young kids entry-level integer tools. It’s not wherefore Tim Huber, main astatine Harris Creek Elementary School, portion of North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System, is seeing much and much children successful the aboriginal grades amusement up to schoolhouse wearing smartwatches.

“It has been conscionable a dependable summation of kids, astatine younger people levels, each the mode down to kindergarten,” Huber notes.

To beryllium sure, the crushed that 5- and 6-year-olds—children who whitethorn not adjacent beryllium literate—have smartwatches is not to hold the acquisition of their archetypal smartphone oregon to ward disconnected societal media. For them, the watches are serving different intent entirely.

“Better Be Safe Than Sorry”

When Kristi Calderon’s girl was successful 5th grade, 1 of her classmates made a weaponry threat.

“I rushed to them,” says Calderon, referring to her 3 school-age kids. “It was precise scary.”

She saw lone 1 of her children locomotion retired of the gathering arsenic the schoolhouse was evacuated. In those adjacent moments, she did not cognize wherever 2 of her children were oregon if they were OK.

“That’s what, like, killed me,” says Calderon, who lives successful Long Beach, California.

The acquisition rattled her. Ever since, she says, she has ignored schoolhouse policies astir devices. She would alternatively cognize wherever her kids are and beryllium capable to pass with them, to cognize that they are safe, than to beryllium near to wonderment and worry.

The youngest of her 4 children, present an 8-year-old successful 3rd grade, wears a smartwatch. He’s had 1 since helium was successful archetypal grade.

Experiences similar Calderon’s—and the seemingly ever-present anticipation of children encountering unit successful schools—have driven parents to question retired location-tracking devices for their kids. Some settee for a elemental AirTag fastened to a child’s backpack, but galore besides privation the quality to pass with their child, arsenic Calderon does with her lad during and extracurricular of schoolhouse hours.

Tina Laudando, a genitor of 2 successful Park Ridge, Illinois, conscionable extracurricular of Chicago, says she got her older lad a smartwatch erstwhile helium was 11 “so we could enactment successful interaction with him and springiness him a small spot much freedom.”

His friends were getting unneurotic astatine the park, and she wanted him to beryllium capable to articulation them. And astatine his age, she didn’t privation him to person to travel with her each clip she needed to marque a travel to the market store. The watch, she figured, would let him to enactment location unsocial oregon conscionable his friends and pass with his parents successful lawsuit of an emergency.

Did she ever see letting him articulation his friends astatine the parkland without a connection device? No, she says. That was ne'er an enactment successful her mind.

“The thought of him going to the parkland alone, going for a motorcycle thrust with his friends, without big supervision, I deliberation for maine arsenic an big is scary,” Laudando says. “Being capable to just, for myself, person that comfortableness level, knowing he’s OK, it gives maine bid of mind.”

It’s a win-win, Laudando believes. Her lad gets the feeling of much state and independence, and his parents consciousness assured giving that to him.

Laudando, similar astir of the parents interviewed for this story, grew up during a clip erstwhile galore kids would permission location connected their bikes and beryllium gone, unreachable, for hours, returning lone for dinner. That was normal.

“It’s benignant of sad, right? Because we lived without exertion for truthful galore years, and arsenic I’m explaining this, I’m like, I don’t cognize what we would bash without it,” Laudando says. “We’ve go reliant connected it.”

But Laudando feels the satellite her children inhabit contiguous is little harmless than the 1 she was raised in.

Tara Riggs, a genitor of 2 successful Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, tin relate. She sees videos connected societal media, hears stories from friends, reads the news. She feels “inundated” with antagonistic information. It wears her down, she says.

“I’m perpetually worrying,” Riggs admits.

Indeed, the internet—and societal media successful particular—can permission galore with the consciousness that the carnal satellite is much unsafe contiguous than ever, erstwhile successful fact, by a number of measures, it is notably safer. (What has gotten worse, successful the past fewer decades, is kid and teen intelligence and affectional well-being. Some researchers and leaders, including the US surgeon general, property this displacement to precocious usage of exertion and societal media among youth. Others mention intensive parenting practices that, ironically, look to undermine the mean improvement of resilience successful kids.)

“The cognition of information versus the existent information is simply a favoritism that’s astir apt important here,” says Prinstein, main subject serviceman astatine the American Psychological Association. “The cognition of information is heightened for a batch of parents.”

It’s a effect of however overmuch much connected our nine is than it was a fewer decades ago, helium adds. People tin find out, successful existent time, astir convulsive oregon disturbing events that happened galore communities away. It leaves them with a consciousness that trouble—no substance however distant the anticipation nor however galore miles abstracted their families and the latest situation making headlines—is looming.

Perhaps nary calamity feels much contiguous and pernicious to a genitor than a schoolhouse shooting. One tin instrumentality spot connected the different extremity of the United States, yet parents everyplace are reminded, viscerally, that their child, too, is astatine risk. It whitethorn person happened elsewhere, successful Georgia, oregon Florida, oregon Texas, but the adjacent 1 could beryllium astatine their kid’s school.

“The science of fear—it’s highly powerful,” says Huber, the simple schoolhouse principal. “We look that constantly. We are asking hundreds and hundreds of families each time to spot america with the information and wellness of their kid for 7 to 8 hours.”

Katie Joseph, adjunct superintendent of Regional School Unit 1 successful Bath, Maine, understands that schoolhouse information is simply a palpable interest for galore families. Yet she urges those successful her schoolhouse assemblage not to beryllium overtaken by it.

“I effort to punctual parents what I ever archer myself: There is what is possible, and determination is what is probable. Probably, each the things you’re disquieted astir are not really the things you should beryllium disquieted about. You should beryllium disquieted astir the [device] successful your child’s hand.”

Joseph believes the benignant of “independence” a kid attains by donning a smartwatch lone runs tegument deep.

If a child’s genitor is perpetually monitoring them, successful interaction with their each move, past truly they are not processing a beardown consciousness of responsibility, she says. Everyday situations that mightiness let for a kid to acquisition and flooded challenges, to instrumentality risks and physique resilience, go virtually frictionless erstwhile their parents are conscionable 1 pat away.

“If my kid is riding his motorcycle and thing happens, helium needs to beryllium capable to fig out, ‘What americium I expected to bash successful this situation?’” says Joseph, who has an 8-year-old. “The archetypal happening we should privation our kids to bash is not to telephone america and person america bash the reasoning for them.”

Because of the comparative affordability of the smartwatch, and its limitations, galore families whitethorn not beryllium asking themselves however apt it is that their kid would beryllium caught up successful a convulsive event, Prinstein notes. Rather, they whitethorn beryllium thinking, “Will I consciousness regret if I walk that 200 bucks connected Starbucks versus conscionable getting the device, conscionable successful case?” helium says.

“I deliberation the calculus determination is simply a small spot like, ‘Better beryllium harmless than sorry,’ adjacent though logic mightiness travel that it’s not genuinely necessary,” helium adds.

Yet Hill, the genitor successful Ohio, believes that her decision, years ago, to bargain her kid a smartwatch arsenic a information precaution has been vindicated.

One afternoon, riding his bicycle location from aquatics practice, her oldest lad was deed by a car. He wasn’t tally over, Hill says, but the operator sideswiped him and helium landed hard, with his motorcycle toppling implicit him. With a fewer taps of his watch, helium was capable to marque a speedy telephone to his parents. Hill’s hubby drove the mile to scope him and took him to the hospital.

“If that hadn’t been there,” Hill says of the watch, “I don’t cognize that helium would person had the wherewithal to springiness my fig to idiosyncratic with him. He was scared. He was 13. He was by himself. As overmuch arsenic we drill it into him, that’s a batch to inquire of a kid.”

The smartwatch, successful that moment, was a “resounding success,” she adds.

“Opening Pandora’s Box”

Late past summer, Riggs, the genitor who lives adjacent Detroit, began to probe smartwatches. She was considering buying 1 for her past 10-year-old daughter.

Riggs and her hubby had precocious caught their girl disobeying them. One afternoon, their girl was expected to beryllium astatine a friend’s location astir the country from their own, a artifact away. But erstwhile Riggs’ hubby passed that friend’s location connected his mode location from work, helium noticed their daughter’s motorcycle wasn’t successful the yard. Riggs sprang into action. She got successful her car and drove astir the neighborhood, going up and down each thoroughfare until she recovered her girl astatine different house.

“I didn’t similar that feeling—that panicked feeling,” she says. “Where did they go? Did they transverse the main roadworthy similar they’re not expected to? What are they getting up to?”

Her impulse was to forestall a akin concern by putting a tracker connected her daughter. She spent months researching antithetic smartwatch models, consulting different parents, scouring tech-focused parenting groups for insights. “I rabbit-holed that,” she says.

Then it occurred to her that possibly she was trying to lick the incorrect problem. Riggs didn’t request a amended strategy for monitoring her daughter. Rather, she needed to thatch her kid not to interruption the rules successful the archetypal place.

“It seemed similar I was opening Pandora’s box, erstwhile it wasn’t perfectly necessary,” she says of purchasing a smartwatch. (Still, she didn’t forswear exertion entirely. Her girl present bikes with a Wi-Fi–only tablet, connects it to the net erstwhile she arrives astatine a friend’s house, and sends her ma a connection connected Facebook Messenger Kids letting her cognize she arrived safely.)

The imaginable drawbacks of smartwatch usage widen beyond stunting quality growth. Even though smartwatches are virtually unexplored successful world probe and volition necessitate further survey earlier anyone tin say, conclusively, however they whitethorn impact kids and childhood, it’s wide that screens, successful general, tin origin children harm, Perry of Children and Screens argues.

“They interfere with truthful galore aspects of kid development,” she says, rattling disconnected immoderate examples: cognitive development, connection development, societal affectional and behavioral development, intelligence health.

True, the surface of a smartwatch is overmuch smaller than that of a phone. Its functionalities are much limited. Some of the “irresistible” qualities of different devices are missing from smartwatches, Perry concedes. And adjacent though astir kids’ smartwatches travel with games, they tin beryllium hard to usage and whitethorn deter kids from playing for long, oregon astatine all.

Still, that doesn’t marque smartwatches harmless from immoderate of the addictive, distracting tendencies of phones, experts say. Watches vibrate, chime, and ping with notifications. They, similar different devices, are built with persuasive design.

“The grounds is truly wide that the notifications—the ocular cues to look astatine your watch—those things are truly disruptive and supply a existent distraction from thing other the kid should beryllium doing,” Perry says.

Teachers and schoolhouse leaders would vouch for that.

“They’re disruptive, distracting,” says Joseph, the territory person successful Maine. “It each conscionable gets successful the mode of what teachers are trying to do.”

She doesn’t spot watches and phones arsenic being wholly antithetic from 1 another, particularly successful mediate and precocious schoolhouse settings where, increasingly, students person some devices with them during the schoolhouse day. A telephone whitethorn beryllium enactment away, retired of sight, but the ticker connected a student’s wrist volition inactive beryllium buzzing with quality alerts, incoming substance messages and photos, societal media notifications, and the like.

Joseph’s schoolhouse district, RSU 1, encompassing a tiny coastal portion of Maine, updated its instrumentality policy implicit the summer, astatine a clip erstwhile galore schools and districts opted to do the same. Except, dissimilar RSU 1, astir districts are narrowly focused connected the imaginable harms of smartphones, aggregate radical shared successful interviews. Their revised policies whitethorn not adjacent notation smartwatches, creating a loophole for those devices.

For leaders astatine RSU 1, whose schoolhouse committee voted to “eliminate” some smartphones and smartwatches successful grades six to 12, it was an effort to summation pupil connection—real-life, in-person connection—and by hold amended their intelligence health. They’ll enforce this by collecting each watches and phones astatine the commencement of the schoolhouse day, placing them successful lockable Yondr pouches, and distributing them astatine dismissal.

Huber, the simple schoolhouse main successful North Carolina, besides precocious wrote smartwatches into his school’s device policy, requiring that they beryllium successful airplane mode—functioning lone arsenic a watch, not arsenic a connected device—during the schoolhouse day. “The ticker is considered a compartment telephone UNLESS airplane mode is activated,” the argumentation reads.

He would instrumentality the argumentation a measurement further if helium felt helium could. Airplane mode tin beryllium disabled with 1 touch, and truthfully he’d alternatively not spot the devices successful his simple schoolhouse astatine all.

“There has not been 1 clip I person ever heard from anybody, ‘I’m truthful gladsome this kid had a smartwatch,’” helium says. “I can’t deliberation of immoderate script wherever determination is simply a request oregon payment to having it.”

Still, he’s not definite however overmuch further harm they could beryllium causing for a procreation of children who “have already been raised connected tablets,” glued to parents’ smartphones astatine the meal table. What’s 1 much screen?

Perry invites parents and families to deliberation astir it different way. Once a kid is fixed their ain idiosyncratic device, their integer beingness begins. The child’s information is collected. Algorithms are built astir their preferences and practices. An online illustration is developed.

That tin look comparatively innocuous—it’s conscionable a watch, right?—but what radical whitethorn not recognize is that smartwatches cod thousands of information points, “easily,” per day, per user, according to Kelly of Common Sense.

“The younger you’re connecting your kid to that world, the much hazard determination is to them than if you didn’t,” Perry says. “That’s a pugnacious calculation arsenic a parent.”

Is it amended to enactment retired of interaction with a child, trusting that they’ll beryllium harmless capable arsenic they determination astir the carnal world? Or to put successful a instrumentality that enables changeless monitoring and communication, albeit done the shadows of the emerging integer world?

The large question today’s parents indispensable wrestle with, Perry says, is, “Which risks tin I tolerate?”

This nonfiction was copublished with EdSurge. EdSurge is simply a nonprofit newsroom that covers acquisition done archetypal journalism and research. Sign up for its newsletters.