The response to "Where's Erica?" should not be to put a tracking wristband on Erica. Perhaps you won't know where Erica is. Perhaps she is doing something dangerous. The oblivion and ambiguity are part of what constitutes acknowledging Erica's personhood.

Feels like an interesting trend where a "solution" for parent anxiety (and to be fair, vastly increased societal expectations around what "care" looks like) is proposed to be electronic surveillance.

It's a kid tracker / ankle bracelet in an attractive form factor.

I was a kid in the 80s, city fringe, single parent who worked until 5:30. Honestly nobody had any idea where me & my friends were a lot of the time. Totally acceptable in that era.

The main worry I have about tech like this is, at what saturation of deployment does the norm shift such that it's irresponsible NOT to electronically track your kids whenever they leave the house?

Honestly—I think this is a great marketing angle for Apple. (And if they didn't want to risk cannibalizing iPhone sales they could also spin it as an anti-phone addiction measure for adults as well!) More and more I'm starting to feel comfortable leaving my phone at home and using just my cellular Watch + AirPods when I'm out and about.

I'd like to see regulators deal with the bundling requirements for devices. It would serve the greater good by preventing a company the size of Apple from obligating that someone must buy an iPhone to use an Apple Watch.

I don't know what kind of games you could fit on a watch (Tamagotchi type things?), but getting kids to actually use things requires them seeing some sort of direct reward.

We bought cheapo dumb phones for our kids and they'd never remember to take them with them, but once we were forced to get them smart phones suddenly that was never a problem.

And by forced I mean the endless wearing down of the whining and crying and petulance because all their friends had smartphones. Ugh, one of many occasions where I failed as a parent.