The Country School is an independent, coeducational, Pre-K through 8 school founded in 1934.
Right Start Blog
Smart Watches
A good friend of mine received an Apple Watch this Christmas as a gift. She absolutely loves it! She receives texts, sends and receives phone calls, checks her email and gets news and weather updates. Even more importantly, it tracks her exercise, displays her heart rate, alerts her that she has been sitting too long, and that it’s time for some meditation! What can’t it do?! It sounds wonderful and I have seen many of my friends and colleagues sporting these electronic devices. I became a little worried, though, when I began to see these same electronic devices on the wrists of our students.
I decided it was time to look a little more deeply into the pros and cons of children using smart watches. So I read a few articles on them and researched the manufacturers’ websites and here are six things I think parents should know about smart watches before jumping aboard this tech trend:
- Kids will become even more connected! Vibrations will alert your child that they have received a text message or some other social media notification. With a smart watch, your child is literally attached to his or her device. It’s just a little too easy to access.
- You will be able to track your child via GPS on his or her smart watch. This can be a good thing or a bad thing.
- Smart watches will definitely factor into the classroom. They have the potential of being a major distraction from school work. That is one of the reasons we have said they cannot be out or on in school.
- Children will be able to track their level of activity. This has the potential of making fitness more fun for kids.
- For parents who are worried about the amount of time their children spend looking at a screen, this is just one more screen to monitor. It’s already hard to tell if your child is being cyber-bullied or talking to unsavory characters via text message. Keeping track of all of this gets even worse when the device is actually affixed to your child’s wrist.
- There are likely some type of parental controls. What they are and how well they work, I’m not sure. I had a hard time finding much information on what is out there.
I vote no to children wearing smart watches. As an educator, I believe children should be wearing analog watches to help them better learn how to tell time, but you as parents need to make your own decisions about children having these devices outside of school. For now, we know they are too disruptive in our classrooms and on our playgrounds.
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