Susan Alfieri sends her 9-year-old daughter outside to play every afternoon with instructions to be back in time for dinner. She’s one of a small but growing number of parents trying to give their kids a taste of the freedom they enjoyed growing up—but with a reassuring digital tether.
She bought her daughter a Verizon smartwatch in January so she could phone home if needed while walking back from school. During the coronavirus lockdowns, the watch became a way for her daughter to get outside. Now, as stay-at-home orders are lifting but many summer camps remain closed, it has become crucial for socializing with other kids on the block. Several children in her close-knit neighborhood in Marin County, Calif., recently got smartwatches, and they all play outside till dusk. It’s like a scene out of “Stranger Things,” minus the Demogorgon.
“I love this 1980s way of life, where everyone is outdoors riding bikes, but I also love my 2020 life where technology lets me know where my children are,” said Ms. Alfieri, an assistant marketing director.
Giuliana Alfieri got her GizmoWatch in January and Evan Coxon got his in May; their mothers want them to play and explore outdoors while just a phone call away.
Photo: Angela DeCenzo for The Wall Street JournalVerizon’s GizmoWatch 2 enables parents to include up to 10 contacts that kids can text or call with the press of a button. There are several prewritten text messages kids can send to them, such as “I’m at school” and “When are you picking me up?” Through the GizmoHub app on their Apple or Android phone, parents can track their kids’ location and set up “geo-fences” to trigger alerts when their kids go out of bounds. Parents of young kids also have been buying Relay cellular walkie-talkies and Gabb Wireless phones, which have no browser, app store or games.
Ms. Alfieri’s neighbor, Rachel Coxon, got her son a GizmoWatch in May, when he turned 10. He has been using it a lot lately as he explores the neighborhood on foot or bike. “I just call him 20 minutes before dinner and say, ‘I need you home at 6,’ ” she said. “This is my way of giving my son some freedom where I’m just a call away.”
After decades of declining independence for children, parents are discovering a possible future in which technology serves as a tool to give children more freedom—and more time outside, away from their devices.
GizmoWatches can contact up to 10 trusted callers with the push of a single button, with the option to use prewritten text messages such as, ‘When are you picking me up?’
Photo: Angela DeCenzo for The Wall Street JournalThe trick is getting kids excited about a gadget they can’t play Minecraft on.
In 1971, 80% of 7- and 8-year-olds went to school on their own; by 1990, only 9% did, according to one study. In his book “Last Child in the Woods,” on nature-deficit disorder, Richard Louv cites a study showing a 50% decline in the number of 9- to 12-year-olds who spent time doing outdoor activities between 1997 and 2003. He examines the reasons, and a big one is a fear of strangers, which was born out of frightening headlines of child abductions in the 1980s and tales of razorblades in Halloween candy. Although many stories were overhyped—or even false—they still inform the decisions we make for our kids both online and off. Fear, after all, is the bedrock of parenthood.
Companion apps for kids’ smartwatches have been installed 4.3 million times in the U.S., according to SensorTower. A Verizon spokesman declined to provide sales figures for the GizmoWatch but said the company has seen an uptick in sales in the past month. A spokeswoman for Relay says it has seen an 85% increase in sales and a 40% rise in daily usage since mid-May.
Parents are buying these devices for their kids, but there’s the question of how long kids will actually use them before they beg for a smartphone.
“When my oldest was 6, I gave her a kid phone but she never used it and less than a year later she looked at me and said, ‘When do I get a real phone?’ ” said Eddie Hold, president of NPD Group’s connected intelligence practice. “It’s the same with wearables. Kid watches just aren’t cool.”
Parents of young children have been buying Relay cellular walkie-talkies; a Relay spokeswoman said sales have climbed 85% since mid-May.
Photo: RelayJill Koziol bought a GizmoWatch for the older of her two daughters about 18 months ago as a way to alleviate her fears about the 8-year-old riding her bike to school. “Social media takes the edge cases in the world and makes them feel very common, when in reality this is the safest time in this country to be raising children,” said Ms. Koziol, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., and runs Motherly, a lifestyle brand.
“I feel very strongly that how I was raised, in a more rural area where I could go down to the creek by myself, was not just lovely but really important in creating independence and developing confidence,” she said. “I wanted to find a way to recreate that for my daughter.”
Shortly after she got the watch, the girl’s bike chain fell off on the way to school, so she called her dad, who rode his own bike to her and fixed it. The watch has freed Ms. Koziol and her husband to take walks around the neighborhood, leaving their older daughter in charge of her 6-year-old sister. Their daughter called them during one of their walks, and they could hear the garbage-disposal running in the background: The girls were doing dishes and didn’t know how to turn it off. Ms. Koziol and her husband were frantic until they determined that no little hands were in danger.
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For Krista Boan, the decision to get her oldest child a Gabb phone was mainly to provide her with communication while keeping her away from things she shouldn’t be exposed to on a smartphone.
Sending her 13-year-old daughter out, by herself or with friends and a phone that can only make calls, she said, teaches her daughter to rely on landmarks, friends or even strangers to find her way home if she gets lost. But the Stilwell, Kan., mom and co-founder of Start, a digital-wellness nonprofit, said it’s also meant to teach her to find her way metaphorically.
“When I send her and a friend to go on a walk, I know she’ll be developing that friendship. Someday, when she’s a young adult and she feels lonely or lost, she’ll know from those excursions that she can reach out to a friend,” Ms. Boan said. “We’re building an internal compass.”
Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com
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