With all the talk about the downsides of smartphones for teens, parents have turned to smartwatches as a way to stay in touch with their young children while avoiding full access to the Internet and social media. a telephone
At least that was the narrative a couple of years ago. But more recently, more companies have been marketing smartwatches for 4- and 5-year-olds. And at younger ages, it is not children who ask for the devices, but parents who seek to monitor their children out of concern for their safety.
That's what EdSurge senior reporter Emily Tate Sullivan discovered when she spent months investigating the recent rise of kids' smartwatches for an article EdSurge co-edited with WIRED magazine last week.
“The worst-case scenario in the minds of the parents I spoke to is always lurking,” he says. “These parents think, 'If there's a school shooting, if there's a lockdown, I want to be able to communicate with my child in that locked classroom. If they are kidnapped, I want to know exactly where they are. Maybe they still have a watch on their wrist and you can track them. I mean, these are things that are very unlikely, but it doesn't really matter. Fear is omnipresent. “It’s a really powerful force.”
But while parents are focusing on physical safety when giving smartwatches to their children, they may not be considering the downsides of starting a digital life so early, according to digital media experts. And schools increasingly view devices as a distraction, sometimes when parents text their children during the school day. However, watches are often not included in school bans on smartphones, and they are not always mentioned in the conversation about the effects of digital devices on children.
For this week's EdSurge podcast, we break down the story with an interview with Tate Sullivan, including details he couldn't include in the final piece. And in the second half of the episode, the author reads the entire article, so you can see this story in podcast form.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or in the player below.
