Google releases smart watch for kids

Smartwatches may be an overlooked answer to the kid phone conundrum. Watches have the communication and location tracking that parents demand without the distraction of phones.

The best thing about this is, you don't have to worry about your kids outgrowing it. Google will cancel it before they do.

My kids main demand is the following features, and this watch doesn&#x27;t deliver on any of them:<p>1. Whitelist contacts for calling and text call - installing an app is a pain for older ppl &#x2F; friends.<p>2. Music: Why not Google? This already has headphone support and the Pixel watch hardware which support musics.<p>3. Maps: in case they need to go A to B. WearOS has google maps, so this should be an easy add. School bus is on google maps for e.g, so being able to check time to leave would be great.<p>4. Battery: 16hrs at launch is not going to age well...<p>Overall, despite being in the market for this, would not buy.<p>Features kids didn&#x27;t ask for and I don&#x27;t want:<p>Gaming: There is a market for gamification, but it seems to me the product team went overboard and spent way too much time here at the cost of making a better kids watch. I have no doubt it can and will make some kids more active, but...

In next year: Google EOL watch for kids, closes servers rendering watches useless.

I feel somewhat in a twilight zone. I&#x27;m not a fan of this device, but I also don&#x27;t understand the over the top paranoia around it. Why do we invent such absurdly terrifying discourse around kids?<p>If you don&#x27;t want this for your kids, just don&#x27;t get it. If you are worried about folks knowing where your kids are and what they are up to, I have bad news for you about neighborhood gossip.

$59.98 a year for unlimited connectivity is a pretty good deal. My kids are getting to the age where we leave them for things like soccer practice or summer camps. Not really interested in giving them a phone yet... but want them to be able to keep in touch. This seems like a decent compromise.

Smart watches for kids are great compared to alternatives. My kids have Apple Watches and aren&#x27;t asking me for phones&#x2F;tablets (and the related evils like IG, TT, etc). Love to see this from Google (and Apple).

I was at one point head of security and infratructure at Pebble and the only person standing in the way of personally identifiable biometric data being directly accessible on employee workstations. I know such practices end with data leaked or sold.<p>I believed Pebble users could enjoy rich data-driven features without fear as long as someone like me had their back. That sense of mission was part of why I stayed on to the end.<p>Once Pebble and I were integrated into Fitbit I got to see up close that they are not a wearables company, but a surveillance capitalism firm that will profit from all available data, even not-technically-hipaa protected medical data in any way legally possible. No one there had any mission but share-price-go-up.<p>I quit 3 months before my golden handcuffs came off, because I realized I no longer wanted to be part of an organization so deeply negligent with security and unethical with data usage.<p>I then got to watch from a distance as Pebble user trust and user data was then gobbled up again, this time by Google.<p>Now firms like Google have fully saturated the adult market and seek to parasitically cause behavior changes in children while extracting highly profitable biometric data from them too.<p>A ratified-and-strengthened American Privacy Rights Act cannot come soon enough.<p>We have to convince our legislators to stop these predators.

&gt; Fitbit Ace LTE is designed to protect your child’s privacy and wellbeing. Parents can see their child’s recent activity and goal progress, but older data will be automatically deleted from our systems. Location data is only shown to parents and is automatically deleted after a short time.<p>&gt; There are no third-party apps or ads shown to kids, and health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads.<p>Sounds better than the regular smart watches.

I remember running a lemonaide stand as a kid back in the late 90s with my friend, we were 11-12ish small town in the PNW. We were at the end of his driveway along the main road that went out of town. Noone got abducted or molested; we were just fine and didn&#x27;t have cellphones. The obsession with not letting kids play or be in the real world is going to come back to bite society hard in 10-20yrs when generation alpha will need to navigate the real world.<p>Having kids inside gaming and not going outside is going to do more physical damage (childhood diabetes&#x2F;obesity&#x2F;metabolic syndrome) when compared to the very unlikely event of a child obduction.

A smartwatch for kids could be so good if it was designed in a way to be educational, but most importantly, which respects a child’s privacy utmost, even from their parents in terms of tracking.<p>For example, a maps app, to always get the kid home if they’re lost. Medication reminders. Fitness tracking. Emergency SOS. A calendar to remind them about family birthdays and upcoming holidays. School timetables. Medical ID. Payment cards or passes for travel (in Western Europe a lot of schoolchildren commute by themselves, especially on public transport) and spending their allowance. Let the kid choose to notify their family of their location as and when they want to. Empower them to use tech to their advantage but put their privacy first.<p>Children are going to end up as adults in this world regardless of whether we teach them, so we should be teaching them the benefits and warning them of the many bad actors. We should be teaching our children the skills they need to navigate the modern world. This includes technology and abusive&#x2F;controlling relationships.<p>I believe a good responsible smartwatch for kids can exist. Alas, this is Google and helicopter parents exist, so this product is not it.

$230 is a bit high up-front cost for a kids watch. Compare this to something like TickTalk and it seems that TickTalk has more features. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myticktalk.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myticktalk.com&#x2F;</a>. The design of the Google kids watch does look nicer though. TickTalk is pretty bulky and the UI is not great.

The design doesn&#x27;t look kid-proof at all with the curved front glass. And I&#x27;m not sure what they&#x27;re on about when saying &quot;first of a kind&quot;.

I was hopeful this would be minimalist, secured contacts version of general purpose OS used in more powerful smartwatches. Regular phone and message apps, parent-limited contacts, communications logged where the parent can review&#x2F;block it.<p>We are currently sharing a Verizon Gizmo 3 among multiple children. The GizmoHub app is not bad but its mandatory use is frustrating. Friends need substantial parental help to start communicating with the Gizmo user (account creation with Verizon). Forcing all communications through a dedicated and clunky app is a non-starter.<p>Battery life is the other challenge. Kids don&#x27;t heed advice to conserve the less than all day battery life. Later when communications for pick-up are most needed, the watch is often low on power.

When I was a kid I wanted a slick James Bond style smartwatch that had lasers, tools, and other badass capabilities, not this baby-ified fitness tracker.

Does it come in ankle bracelet form factor?

We&#x27;ve been happily using the Verizon Gizmo watch for a while now. It&#x27;s a deliberately crippled smart watch. No games, no apps (it has a step counter and a stopwatch, but that&#x27;s about it) -- some calling functionality, some messaging functionality, tons of oversight (limited contacts, all contacts must be approved by a guardian), and location tracking.<p>It&#x27;s kind of bad at all of these, but our primary thought is to have it be a limited capability device -- similar to a flip phone but a wearable.<p>This looks like it&#x27;s trying to enter the same market, but with a bunch of really really really really stupid shit.<p>&quot;Meet the eejie. The eejie is the center of the Fitbit Ace LTE. The more your kids move, the more goals they hit and the happier they make the eejie.&quot;<p>You&#x27;d have to be an &quot;eejie&quot;-it to buy into this cutesy bullshit.

Where I live, &quot;smart watches&quot; have been a thing for about 5 years now. The reality is that they have a one year life span before the social aspect catches up to them. We wanted to get our son a smart watch, so that he could call us if he needed something, or we could call him to come home; no tracking.<p>The problem is cohort. Friends have phones. Friends COORDINATE over WhatsApp (not communicate). This means, that in order for him to know that he can hang out with others, he needs a way to be part of that.

Prepare your child for the path, not the path for your child.

How will this work out with grade school kids&#x27; socialization, when some kids in a class have the neat smartwatches, but some don&#x27;t?<p>I remember very much noticing as a young kid that I didn&#x27;t have some things some other kids had. But most of the time that was at home, rather than visible every day. And I was also a bit aware that some other kids had less than I did. (Parochial school uniforms helped.)

Here we go with more helicopter parenting devices.<p>Please parents...look up the studies on how detrimental it is to hover over every aspect of your child&#x27;s life. It&#x27;s not good.<p>I raised five kids to adulthood with the last one finishing his freshman year of college this year.<p>None of them had devices until middle school and even then, it was restricted. We made our kids roam around like feral coyotes.<p>They are absolutely better for it.

Google tracking yo kids, your moma, papa, sisters. Build a ad profile early, even a family profile, gotta serve them good ads

$230 device, plus $10&#x2F;mo, and that is per kid.<p>At what age does Google think kids are responsible enough to be given such a device?

This is an interesting move by Google. The watch market for kids is <i>huge</i> and growing. Look at the major companies sales here. Also look at the amount of kid&#x27;s smart watches available on Amazon and number of reviews (I know, i&#x27;m sure some of those are fake yada yada).<p>The detractors here say &quot;let the kids be free&quot; and &quot;no new tech for kids&quot;, but I wonder if those people have kids today? Parents <i>WANT</i> to give their kid&#x27;s more outdoor freedom in this f&#x27;d up world. Tracking products like this <i>give them more peace of mind</i>.<p>At $10&#x2F;month (or $5&#x2F;mo with annual buy), this is competitive and possibly a new recurring revenue stream for Google&#x27;s consumer products group.

&gt; Ace Pass required. Works with most phones running Android 11.0 or newer or iOS 15 or newer.<p>This is a bummer. It&#x27;s still better than being android only or iOS only, but this would really have benefited from allowing standalone use with management from the web for instance.

Similar devices were banned in western europe, and were sent to türkiye at a discount.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-42030109" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-42030109</a>

This reminds me of an idea I&#x27;ve been noodling on for a bit about my kids. I want them to be able to take more risks and be more independent - but counterintuitively, I think this means putting them in a safer environment.<p>For example, I&#x27;d be waaaay more comfortable letting my young kids (6yrs old) roam around outside the house if will lived in a safe suburb rather than a city. I think the same is true for this type of watch, I&#x27;d let them do more stuff at a younger age if I knew I could always get a hold of them and knew where they were.

I just hope this is not a repeat of the Versa 4 where no third party apps were allowed[1] (unlike the prev versions which allowed them). That&#x27;s a head-scratcher. This is the thing that gets people to spring for a Garmin.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.fitbit.com&#x2F;t5&#x2F;Versa-4&#x2F;Can-I-install-apps-on-my-Versa-4&#x2F;td-p&#x2F;5414729" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.fitbit.com&#x2F;t5&#x2F;Versa-4&#x2F;Can-I-install-apps-o...</a>

Coincidentally Vodafone just stopped supporting their Neo smart watch which is pretty much the same, turning it into eWaste come August this year.

I really just want a dumb kids watch with very long battery life that is trackable using the Apple and Google find my device network.

&gt; <i>You have control over when they can play on their Fitbit Ace LTE. Set downtimes during the day, while still letting them get in touch with you if they need to.</i><p>This sounds like a great feature. I want my kid to be able to reach me in an emergency, but I want there to be zero distractions during the school day. Hopefully Apple implements this on Apple Watches that use Family Setup.

The communication part is a good idea but games? Would hate to watch my kid stare a smart watch to figure out what to do with herself.

&gt; Meet Fitbit Ace LTE, the first-of-its-kind smartwatch that makes movement fun for kids.<p>You know what also makes movement fun for kids? Being able to go outside. Not having helicopter parents. A bicycle. A football. Something is very wrong if kids don&#x27;t even want to run around unless they&#x27;re filling up rings on a screen.

I&#x27;ve never gotten smart watches.<p>There are some things that a smart watch simply can&#x27;t do, due to limited screen size and resources. And if you&#x27;re going to need to carry around a regular smart phone to handle those cases, why bother carrying both?<p>It feels weirdly redundant, more like a gimmick.

Damn that&#x27;s expensive for something that&#x27;s meant for kids.<p>Don&#x27;t forget Google refuses to repair their watches. Break the screen? Go buy a new one. Ifixit found that it&#x27;s actually not hard to replace the screen&#x2F;glass module but with one issue: Google won&#x27;t sell you one.

I am amazed by the way decisions are made at Google.<p>In my imaginations the story was something like that: - How to keep next generations hooked into useless technology? - Oh, let&#x27;s make their parents buy smartwatches to their kids, this way we A. will track them 24&#x2F;7, sell other useless stuff too.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 92 million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

With this, kids will be prepared for wearing hand or ankle monitors [0] in the future.<p>0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Electronic_monitoring_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Electronic_monitoring_in_the...</a>

I think we are crossing a boundary.<p>If our world gets so broken, that parents need this, we should start changing our world

People who have parents&#x2F;relatives with cognitive problems might want this for tracking purposes.

There are a couple companies already doing this for some years. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soymomo.us&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soymomo.us&#x2F;</a> Even has its own chatgpt for kids, Spotify and videocalls.<p>Fitbit is late and device is expensive for basic features.

I find the gabb watch is pretty decent. Similar pricing?<p>Battery life is a little low.

Gabb wireless and others have had this for ages, for much cheaper.

No sleep or stress with heart rate seems like a missed opportunity. The games to help kids move is interesting but if a distraction in school more trouble than it’s worth.

This HN discussion flares one clear thing. While it&#x27;s a debatable topic, Google did their homework and there are enough potential customers for this product.

The last thing I want is my kids playing on a tiny screen instead of with their friends, which is exactly what would happen if you give this to a 7-10 year old.

It says GPS location, but does it do mapping? That and calling are like the two most valuable features (only 20 contacts, so no group chats with his class?)

The value and battery life aren’t there are the biggest issues. Not kidding when I say I think the device needs to double that runtime minimum.

&gt; The only way to move through the game is to get moving.<p>Why gamify children’s movement related activities? Instead of making them fun in the first place?

As a 8yo kid&#x27;s parent, I hope it have no game, no pay function. Just locate and video call, message, long battery life.

Google wants to understand the next generation so they can plan how to adapt in the coming years

Gamifying fitness and activity I really like. The rest is something I don&#x27;t think we need.

I&#x27;am an adult but I like a watch with exergames on it. I&#x27;ll buy one for myself.

This would be a good idea if we didn&#x27;t already know Google&#x27;s real agenda here.

Having gone through 5 different fitbit watches and them all breaking within a year or two, as well as two different fitbit scales and them breaking too, i have moved on and will NEVER look back.<p>Fitbit is CRAP. let me reiterate. crap. C-R-A-P. crap. Lets use that in a sentence.<p>Mark grumbled, &quot;My Fitbit is such crap—it breaks down faster than I can count my steps!&quot;<p>And for those wondering, I moved onto Garmin watches. I mean if you&#x27;re going to pay it might as well be a nice one and most importantly one that is reliable.

Just what a developing brain needs, useless games available any time. (sacarsm)

Creepy, low-quality and overpriced! The Google hardware trifecta.

Requires a $10&#x2F;mo data plan. So that is 2x of the many $5&#x2F;mo plans you can get for a standalone-setup apple watch SE. Price is $70 less than the SE. Ok, so that crosses over in just over a year.<p>But, I know the apple watch will be supported for 7 years or so. This is a google product, so I expect it to be EOLed tomorrow. No thanks. Fool me 100 times, shame on you, fool me 101 times, shame on me, google!

Why does this worry me more than the swarms of armed drones?

&quot;Hook em while they are young&quot; - George Carlin. Dogma.

Hoy is a device that cost 229.95$ + 10$ month sub for kids?

What&#x27;s the benefit of this over a cheap LTE Apple Watch? I&#x27;m not an AW fanboy (Pebble&#x2F;Garmin for me), but I had always anticipated getting my kid an LTE AW when the time came.<p>It doesn&#x27;t look like the pricing is much different, and for families with iPhones it would presumably be simpler to stay in the Apple ecosystem. Is there something I&#x27;m missing, or is this just for Android families?<p>Regardless, I&#x27;m happy to see innovation in the space.

Oh hell no!<p>I&#x27;ll stick with a dumb phone for my kids, thanks.

A noble idea that looks to be mired in bad design.<p>Once again Google ties a product to a subscription service (beyond whatever lte connectivity which would be needed anyways). They seem to be always chasing getting that recurring revenue by adding unnecessary features. This adds little value, greatly increases the maintenance cost for Google, and puts the risk on the customer for whether Google will continue thinking it&#x27;s worth it.<p>Worst of all, &quot;Games&quot;. As a lover of games as an artistic medium, and a game designer myself, I&#x27;m just so tired of gamification crap being added to everything else. Flashy graphics and numbers going up are the &quot;sugar&quot; to games&#x27; &quot;nutrition&quot; of interactive experience, mechanical exploration, and emotional expression. Rewarding children with external rewards over building internal motivation is dubious at best, and incredibly harmful at worst.

This is about the same price as the Apple Watch SE w&#x2F; LTE -- seems tough for Google to compete with an established, reliable alternative at the same price point.

Why is this not available to RoW?

Heroin for kids! NOTIFICATIONS NOTIFICATIONS TECH TECH START THEM EARLY QUANTIFY EVERYTHING RECORD EVERYTHING CONNECT EVERYTHING

&gt; <i>Every Ace Band unlocks a themed Bit Valley mini store that levels up the eejie’s house. Get wacky decor for the room and cool outfits for their eejie. There are new themes to collect with each band.</i><p>Scummy ass shit. Incredibly direct tell about their true nature here.<p>I rather like the general notion, alas. The $120&#x2F;yr annual plan seems not great but $60&#x2F;yr offer for connectivity seems decent. Albeit it seems quite expensive compared to the expensive data-consumption a watch is going to have. I wonder if it works with other plans?

230 USD? Thanks, no, thanks )))

No.

It won&#x27;t let me stick a SIM card in it and instead makes me buy some proprietary overpriced LTE plan? That&#x27;s pretty sickening. WTF Google?

And it has been sunset already!

There&#x27;s no mention of software support lifetime. If this is just another multi-hundred dollar electronic gadget that&#x27;s going to be useless in 2 years, why would I buy it for my kid?<p>I can get a refurb Apple Watch SE 2nd gen direct from Apple for $209. I&#x27;m clearly not going to buy this Google watch because of the price.

Ah yes, my favorite genre of comments - parenting opinions.

I really don&#x27;t get it: paying a couple hundred so you can spend 2 seconds reaching for your wrist instead of 5 seconds pulling your phone out of your pocket<p>Like is the watch supposed to replace the phone? Or if not, why bother? If you need heart rate monitoring, why does it need an internet connection?

Yeah, no.

Ugh, I threw up a little in my mouth just from the headline.<p>This constant tracking of kids is unnecessary and dangerous. Generations of kids survived without their parents needing to know their location at all times.<p>And yes, I totally admit, some kids (very few actually depending on the locale) <i>didn&#x27;t</i> survive. But we&#x27;ve traded this false sense of &quot;safety&quot; for kids that are so risk averse it is seriously negatively affecting their development. I highly recommend the writings of Jonathan Haidt - he not only has great arguments but also has a lot of data to back up his conclusions.<p>Kids don&#x27;t need more tech, they need less of it (and FWIW, most adults, too).

Anyone else who would be uncomfortable opting your child into location, behavior and health surveillance by the world&#x27;s largest advertising company?

My partner is on one of the teams responsible for red tape and cost-cutting at Alphabet. After having frequent conversations about past failed projects, I&#x27;m surprised this project got the green light. Personally, I don&#x27;t see this product taking off. As a parent, I think it looks quite lame, and I don&#x27;t think anyone at Google knows how to break into product areas for kids. I&#x27;ve seen quite a few headlines concerned about Nvidia being the next Cisco, but as someone who has had family at both Cisco and Google over the last 30 years, I really think Alphabet is more likely to become the next Cisco, where middle-aged engineers go to work for 30 hours a week to keep the internet&#x27;s backbone afloat.

&gt; Fitbit Ace LTE has been tested with hundreds of families and is designed to get 16+ hours of use from a full battery.<p>Fail. Adults struggle to recharge their devices every day and my kids certainly won&#x27;t remember to. Garmin Kids watches, while drastically different in functionality and connectivity, last 12 months before a battery replacement is needed and are wildly more suitable for young kids.

I wonder if they write their shutdown notice at the same time as their landing page copy for products like this. &#x2F;s

Children don&#x27;t participate in sports anymore because of tech, so we created tech to counter other tech so they go outside more.

&gt; Requires Ace Pass data plan $9.99&#x2F;mo.<p>LOL

Under Tech Specs, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.google.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;product&#x2F;fitbit_ace_lte_specs?hl=en-US" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.google.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;product&#x2F;fitbit_ace_lte_specs?hl=...</a>:<p>&quot;Tap to Pay (NFC)4(Coming soon)&quot;<p>What? Why would my kid need Tap to Pay? That&#x27;s just setting the user&#x2F;Google up for a horror story where the watch wearer goes overboard on spending for some lame game with in-app payments...<p>Or are they expecting adults to use this as well?

&gt; wild things<p>That formulation is poor taste imo

This is one good product.

&gt; Google releases smart watch for kids<p>No. The smartwatch is for Google, to track your kids.

The 5% of the world that makes most of the decisions has an active interest in creating a labor force that will passively and diligently maintain order.<p>The subconscious drive to give young children technology is no different in its psychohistorical origins than the Hitler Youth. One could ask for what purpose does somebody want to &quot;monitor&quot; themselves.<p>Is it for any great works or for the prolongation of bare life through the min-maxing of REM cycles.

So what are they doing with the movement data? Is it tied to a shadow profile for ad targeting?

That screen design is going to break really easy. Should have integrated an protective bezel. FAIL.

LTE is good, but what is the subscription for? A sturdy LTE watch that can call and text would have been great. This product is dead on arrival.

If I have kids, I will never trust them with an evil and dangerous company like google, same goes for facebook too, the business model been and still exploiting, abusing, and selling users’ data. An open source alternative, both software and hardware would be ideal for kids, in the meantime, being a good and dedicated parent is the best strategy, and keep your eyes on your kids, tech isn’t needed.