Is an Apple Watch Safe and Suitable for Your Kid, Tween, or Teen? A Parent's Guide to Setting it Up and Other Non-Smart Phone Options

I've just spent the last 3-4 days submersed in tech-land trying to put together the puzzle of trying to get my son an Apple Watch without him having an iPhone.

Let me back up... my son is turning 13 this week. He has had both a Gizmo and Gabb watch for the past 3 years, with various levels of success and failure. Let's take a look at both...

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Gizmo Experience

The Gizmo device is available through Verizon and definitely has been a go-to for tweens in our neighborhood. Our experience was that the Gizmo itself seemed to break a lot (I mean this was an active boy wearing it who also seemed to always forget it by the sandbox) and it wasn't reliable as far as the calling network which left me on edge, so we decided to try and switch to the Gabb.

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Gabb Experience

Gabb is it's own company of safer cell phones and watches for kids which I was anxious to try and wanted to support their efforts. One of the main issues out of the gate with his Gabb watch was that it only updates it's GPS every 10 minutes. That was surprisingly frustrating as I couldn't tell if my son had made it to school or his friend's house on time or on schedule which meant I had to call and follow-up a lot more than I wanted to. After all I was trying to give him a longer leash. 10 minutes of not being sure where your kiddo is, depending on the situation, can be really unnerving.

The most frustrating thing that we quickly found out was that the Gizmo and Gabb watches won't communicate with each other. This left my son unable to connect with all of his friends that had Gizmo watches themselves, including both of the kids he walked to school with. That meant every morning I would once again have to text moms regarding who was running late, who was out of town or had a dentist appointment or was sick, etc. Since that responsibility had been on the kids for the past couple of years, our Gabb purchase really messed up that system which really sucked.

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Apple Watch Experience

So...for his 13th birthday we decided to bite the bullet and pay the early cancelation fee for our Gabb watch ($80) and invest in an Apple watch for our new teenager. We are strong believers of the Wait Until 8th campaign in our house and that is what we did with our older son. It was tough to wait, there was a lot of push back from him, his friends and even some family, but after seeing how much everything changed once that phone got in his hand, even with a long list of parental controls in place, we plan to stick to that plan which means a little over a year still before our youngest will get his hands on his own phone.

Everyone rightly has their own opinions based on their child, your communication needs and general ideas about technology, but if you are someone who is looking for a dependable communication device for your child and are interested in an Apple Watch before the leap to the phone itself, I thought I would share my experience.

Let me start by saying I am by no means an expert. In fact, I hate this kind of thing. I am just telling you mom-to-mom about my experience so hopefully you don't have to have quite so many google sessions asking all the questions and/or phone calls to different providers and Apple. Here we go...

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Overall Goal:

Purchase an Apple watch for my son that has his own phone number and works on cellular (not just on wifi) with parental controls and is affordable each month.

I started by going into an Apple store. It's funny how even the Apple experts are both surprised and a little uneducated on the process of getting a cellular watch to connect to your family plan without a phone attached to that phone number.

Each and every step along the way and every person and provider I talked to encouraged me to just get him a phone.

It would be easier and more straight forward.

I'll cut to the chase and say that after A LOT of phone calls and visits to the dreaded cellular carriers, below is what we settled on. I had investigated Verizon thoroughly as that is the cellular company that the rest of us in the family have our service through, but the main drawback there was that if we activated a line for our Apple Watch, then when he is ready to switch to an iPhone, we would not get the normal promotion of a free iPhone when you activate a new line. Even they had to admit that going to another cellular company for the next year or so just made better sense financially, and after further investigation T-Mobile was the best option I could find.

T-Mobile

• Normally $50 activation fee but you ask and they can lower it to $35

• $20/mth but if you call to get it under 500 mega bites I believe you can get it down to $10/mth, but don't quote me on that. Is it just me or do the answers at every single cellular company differ depending on which associate you speak with??

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Where to buy your watch?

I found all of the following to have good options. We got his at Best Buy but found similar deals at Target, Walmart and Costco. Of course there is always Amazon which does have a lot of great options such as color and size.

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Update:

It has been almost a year since my son has had and been using his Apple Watch.

Parent Perspective:

We have loved it! It is so much more dependable, easy to put parental controls into place and a huge, unexpected bonus is that he can use Apple Pay. That means we can very easily transfer allowance, or other earned money, directly to his watch so he doesn't have to carry cash (nor do we to dish out allowance) and it's a super quick transaction when he needs money at the school book fair or is standing in line at a concession stand too. In general we just really love that he doesn't have the added responsibility of having to take care of a phone, cannot access a lot of things we aren't ready for him to access yet, but we have a clear and easy communication option to reach him at all times. It feels like a nice stair-step up approach to learning the responsibilities (ex. charging, caring for his device, appropriate use of communication, etc.) to moving up in the tech world instead of just giving him a fully loaded iPhone right out of the gate.

Our Son's Opinion:

Is that it is really nice, but it does take some effort to explore and learn how to use all of the apps and features on the watch (which he kind of liked figuring out). He cannot get his own apps, play games and take pictures, which is why he is still really looking forward to a phone in the future.

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Other Options Worth Looking Into

Amazfit Active Smart Watch

I personally switched to this watch from an Apple Watch and have really loved it. It is a fraction of the price of an Apple Watch and has a lot of great features and the best battery life I've ever seen! (Like I only need to charge it about once a week!). Now I did not purchase this and try to set it up as it's own cellular line so that is something you will have to investigate, but know that there are good alternatives to the Apple Watch out there, for your kiddo, and for yourself!

MMGuardian

This looks like a smart phone and you can get onto Google classroom, take pictures and use Spotify, but not much else. My friend's daughter is using an MMGuardian phone and both she and her daughter like it a lot. She can use her iPods, text, call and send and receive photos, however you can't access the internet or download any social media. There is GPS tracking and robust parental controls. It looks like they have a smart phone, but they don't.

Troomi

This one I'm not as familiar with, but do have a friend who has used it for all of her kids and would recommend it. My understanding is that it is kid-safe software built into their phones to protect them from pornography, bullies, predators, there is no social media and it blocks unwanted callers and harmful games. It also allows parents remote text monitoring, content filtering and alerts and notifications to keep parents aware. If you're just getting started with your child's digital world- this is definitely worth looking into.

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I found this process so confusing. I definitely don’t have all the answers but I have more than when I started so hopefully this gives you a bit of a jumpstart.

Keep in mind things are changing all the time too! If you find another great option for this in between tween stage, please let me know at brooke@babblewithbrooke.com.

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