Smartwatches for children: your first mobile phone that you wear on your wrist
Calls, GPS and parent-approved contacts: connected watches promise to keep families in touch and delay the arrival of a smartphone. With models ranging from those without games or social media to more feature-rich devices, prices start at around 120 euros.
If we’re worried that our child might get lost on the way home from school or at the supermarket – or even get lost in the dark recesses of a social network – we’ve got quite a problem on our hands. A dilemma to overcome: how can we communicate with them and know where they are if we don’t want to give them a smartphone? In the past, some parents solved this with non-smartphones, limited to text messages and calls. Or with old smartphones restricted by parental control apps – which, however, children soon learn to get round.
A more high-tech – albeit more expensive – solution is now coming to the rescue of anxious parents: children’s smartwatches.
Let’s get this straight: they aren’t just colourful versions of the Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch for adults. Rather, they are small wrist-worn mobile phones, often equipped with a SIM card and 4G connectivity, which allow you to make calls, send messages and track your child’s location via GPS. However, it is the parent who decides who can contact the child, via an app installed on their own smartphone. And in the most restrictive models, there are no web browsers, social media platforms or even the option to install apps freely.
The features tend to be the same across different products. First and foremost, there is a standalone mobile connection, via a nano-SIM or eSIM: this means the child does not need to have their parent’s phone nearby. Then there are GPS and geofencing features, which allow parents to define a safe area within the app and receive an alert when the device leaves or enters it.
Another key feature is the restricted contact list. Instead of being able to receive calls from anyone, the watch can be set to communicate only with numbers approved by the family. There is also almost always an SOS button and a ‘school mode’ which, during lessons, disables calls, messages and other functions, whilst leaving the watch itself – and, in some cases, the emergency call function – available.
