This has been so good for me and my kid. If they are out and feel like they need adult help, we are a watch tap away. If they want to come home early from a friend’s house, send me a code and I’m there. If they want to go to their friend’s house after school, I’m a text away.
We have a no phone until you’re 13 rule so while the watch is a stripped down phone, it’s not a phone so easy for us all to understand, plus it’s already stripped down, no hassle no fuss.
What a weird rule. You are intentionally destroying your kid’s social, developmental, and interpersonal opportunities because you’re unwilling to actually put in the time to parent.
The least you could do is give them a dumb phone, so they are ostracized less. Or better yet, actually teach and parent them how to use a phone, and then give them a phone with locked down permissions to block tiktok/etc that are actually problematic, while still allowing them access to things that allow them to relate to friends and their community. Trust but verify.
Well you clearly don’t have kids, and if you do, you sound like the shitty parent lol
What an odd, incorrect assumption. Kids need to be able to socialize. This isn’t the 1980s anymore, you can’t just go to a mall, there are very few physical third spaces anymore, literally none in some locations.
For a lot of kids, those third spaces are via phone/online. I can absolutely understand wanting to limit exposure to bad influences of phones, that IS good parenting, but you need to offer alternatives, or managed use, or something, or you’re socially isolating your kid. Worst case scenario, you’re getting them bullied- kids can be cruel (though from what I’ve seen, not as much as they used to be, thankfully).
The person literally said in another comment:
Yes, it’s part of set them up to succeed not fail. And another part of it is I want them to have a clean break from the outside world, from friendship drama or clinginess, from school stuff, etc.
Now, I’m assuming this is partially a situation of english not being the first language, from some of the grammar, but wanting to have their kids be ‘cleanly’ broken away from friendships, school stuff, and the very outside world sounds… look, I’m going to be frank here, their literal goal seems to be socially stunting their kid via helicoptering.
Kids need to learn who they are. You’re not trying to raise someone to be a child, you’re trying to raise someone to be a healthy, functioning adult, and part of that means going through friendships, even friendship drama, exploring the outside world, etc etc.
I feel bad for your children then
For getting to experience life instead of being locked in a house, only able to interact with family?
You are really telling everyone how little you know about parenting. This is what parenting looks like. You parent the kids you have with the skills and tools available. It doesn’t look the same for everyone.
You should probably sit back down.
I stopped smoking cigarettes. I’ve moved on to cigars.
I mean you say that as a joke but cigars you don’t usually inhale into your lungs. Like you’re still at risk of mouth cancer, but if you switched from Cigarettes to cigars, you wouldn’t suffer the myriad of negative health effects that comes with being a cigarette smoker which would objectively be a huge improvement.
Wait you’re not supposed to inhale cigar smoke into your lungs? How do you get high from those then?
Lmao
Parents turn to smart watches? Not in my household! Not one more fucking non Linux piece of shit spying screen more.
Well I certainly understand the pros of this but is training your kid to have a dopamine response everytime a notification comes in and buzzes their arm is dangerous, no? It’s like training the kid to always want that feeling for the rest of their life
In five years: “After global ban of smart watches in schools, parents are increasingly turning to bodyguards and private chaperones”.
They still make flip phones that aren’t “smart”
My kid’s been walking to/from school and roaming the neighborhood since he was 7. Apple Watch FTW. It has its legit uses.
You know there are cheaper watches that do the same thing right
Name three.
“I’m going to strap a $700 watch to this $15K bag of organs, as a tip”
Really moronic take.
Somebody doesn’t have a sense of humor it seems
You’re joking, obtusely, about abduction and murder of children. You expect people to be amused?
This is the internet. Some people will. Probably a lot. Do you expect everybody to have your exact same sensibles and kind of humor?
I get it. I’d bet the other commenters don’t have kids. There’s hypothetical jokes about kids, then there’s jokes to someone about their actual kid. Commenting on a post VS replying to this person who has a kid.
I grew up with a very paranoid father. Somehow this guy has a stack of rough city survival stories but I couldn’t leave the suburban block. I don’t know the best way to raise a kid, but a watch and more freedom to roam sounds nice.
I have a kid. She turns 18 in September. I thought it was funny.
I also still make jokes about my mom, and she is now sitting on top of a shelf at Dad’s house as of a few months ago.
Sure, normalizing paranoia is very funny and definitely doesn’t have any real world negative consequences. Har-de-har-har.
If the neighborhood is safe for a 7 year old without an Apple watch, go ahead. If it’s but the case and they think the watch will make a difference… That’s negligence.
Good, kids are super easy to rob.
As someone who’s 23 and grew up with smartphones and all of that as they were starting to become popular I feel like I have some takes on a lot of the opinions I’ve seen on the different sides of issues like this. I lean in general towards giving your kid a phone once they’re old enough to want to be able to talk with friends and do things on their own afterschool but having some non-intrusive ways to keep an eye on what they’re doing with it until sometime when they’re a teenager. That just seems like the best way to not ostracize them from other kids while still making sure they’re being safe online. Even though in general things worked out fine for me with my parents letting me have my own laptop and iPod touch and eventually iPhone from a pretty young age without really watching what I did on them I definitely see a lot of times that I could have ended up being taken advantage of online if things had been slightly different. And the reason I say non-intrusive ways to keep track of what your kid is doing is because I knew kids who did have like parental restrictions on their phones and all of them knew ways to bypass them and do what they wanted to do anyways. So the only way you’re gonna successfully keep an eye on them is if they don’t know you are and you only interfere if it’s a genuine safety problem, and even then you make sure to not punish them for it as that will make them start hiding things from you actively, you treat it as a learning moment and help them understand why what they were doing wasn’t safe. I’m still very much figuring out what my exact views on this are but I think leaning too far in either direction of not letting them have social media or a smartphone at all even when they’re starting to reach middle school or letting them have unrestricted access to social media and a phone both have their problems and you have to find a good balance in the middle.
The image here is My First Fone. For Android it has terrible notifications. I’m constantly missing messages and calls from my kid.
We do this, 2 timex family family connect watches, the older green ones off eBay. It’s perfect and it opened up the privilege of walking home from school, walking to the park, and walking to friends houses as long as they keep it charged and check in. The newer ones look like an apple watch which I felt made them a theft target but the old ones have changed the family’s life. Then, we can ask them to do chores when they get home from school, and if they do, they can ask us to unlock tablet.
