Author: Yu Yin
"No matter where you are, a phone call will find you immediately." Have you heard this magic advertising slogan for children's smartwatches?
Watch appearance, can talk to the phone, can be marked positioning... Products that escort the safety of children can always quickly enter the hearts of parents. However, after March 15 this year, this advertising slogan has become extremely frightening.
Relying on phone watches to "find you" is not necessarily only parents. /Figureworm Creative
According to expert tests, some versions of older, lower-configuration children's smart watches do not have corresponding privacy settings, and various APP installations can open a variety of sensitive permissions without user authorization.
When investigators implant malware on a children's smartwatch, they can remotely obtain private information such as the child's location, face images, and conversations.
That is to say, once a malicious person invades the watch, the child's every move will be completely public.
Parents' "saver" has become a "tracker" for voyeuristic children, can children's smart watches still be bought?
Start with a "watch that can make phone calls."
Positioning and calling, children's watches use two simplest functions to accurately hit the pain points that parents want to grasp the whereabouts of their children at all times, which is also an important reason for the first batch of "seed parents" to enter the game.
The little nephew of the family is a senior user of children's watches, from the first grade to enter the "watch" to now about to graduate from primary school, he has only changed the watch once in six years, but the telephone watch on the market has been updated for several generations.
The little nephew's first watch is the Q1 in the entry series of the little genius telephone watch, the starting price of six years ago has been forgotten, and now the price of Q1 is 578 yuan, which is a hot sale.
Plastic shells, rubber straps, pixel-like displays... The appearance looks no different from the 10 yuan electronic watch in the stationery store, but its function is far beyond the general watch.
Since it is called a phone watch, it can definitely make a phone call. The first thing to do when you start a new watch is to plug it in with a physical calling card.
The call quality of the watch is good, but the external sound of the speaker does not protect privacy very well.
For example, if the little nephew plays with his friends and forgets the time to go home, when his mother calls, probably all the children will hear how he was taught by his mother.
The function of looking at positioning is enjoyed by parents.
"Download an app on your phone and you'll have the same happiness as monitoring a cat in a rental house at work."
It's time for class to see if he's in the classroom; it's time to see if he's out of school, to see if he's home; it's gym class, see if he's running... When I first bought a phone watch for my child, parents were eager to open the APP eight hundred times a day.
Who doesn't like the feeling of being in control? /Figureworm Creative
The positioning of the phone watch is achieved through GPS, base station, Wi-Fi, acceleration sensor, etc., although there will occasionally be a distance error of tens of meters or a time delay of several minutes, but it can still provide a relatively accurate position.
While parents are willing to be a conscientious monitor, children are more willing to explore the world of information explosion through the boundaries of a chip on their wrist.
After the fourth grade, a watch that only uses phone calls as a gimmick can no longer satisfy the little nephew. Under the soft grinding and hard bubble, he finally ushered in the Z6 in the higher series of little geniuses.
If it is said that spending more than 500 yuan to buy a children's watch has made parents very "flesh pain", then this watch priced at 1398-1856 yuan will make parents angrily spew a "IQ tax", and then helplessly pay the "tax".
Just a "watch that can make a phone call", why can't it satisfy the contemporary primary school students anymore?
To "too much fun is banned by the school"
Is the new watch really an IQ tax? The little nephew did not think so: "The function of this watch is not less than the function of your mobile phone, and the price is not as expensive as the mobile phone, how cost-effective." ”
More functions can be taken for granted, and many merchants are also calculated in this way. /Figureworm Creative
The little nephew brought the watch to show me, and indeed, the new series of watches has made a qualitative leap in appearance:
Although it will still use eye-catching candy colors, the design elements are more technological and not childish; the dial has become thick and textured, and the uneven edges are even a bit like a Casio watch.
But a "secondary two" skill still exposes the fact that it is a children's watch - the dial is bouncing. Yes, while other watches are honestly "lying flat", children's watches can stand up.
When the little nephew stood up his watch to take a picture of me, I unconsciously flashed in my mind the way Conan wanted to anesthetize Maori Kogoro.
I have to say that this wave of operations is really easy to let children into the pit. /Photo by reporter
Next, he introduced me to many of the features of the watch.
In addition to basic functions such as photography, video, alarm clock, pedometer, etc., there are also tools and software that parents are optimistic about, such as English translators, photo readers, and voice encyclopedias; customized third-party applications such as Alipay and NetEase Cloud Music are also among them.
According to the little nephew, the "micro chat" function was the reason why he insisted on using the little genius phone watch.
Unlike other brands of smartwatches, Little Genius built a closed social system. Only children with little geniuses can be added as friends, chat, watch each other's activities and circle of friends.
Social circles need to be run, which is something kids learn on phone watches. Take a cool nickname, add a noble avatar frame, choose a cute dialogue bubble... The image shaping in the micro-chat needs to be completed by integrals.
Remember the post-80s and post-90s who do not eat or drink and also have to save money to buy "QQ shows" and charge "noble yellow diamonds"? Micro-chat also dominates today's elementary school students. However, it is not necessary to use RMB to earn points in a phone watch, but requires you to punch the card persistently.
The strong social desire of primary school students brings great demand stickiness to smart watches. /Photo by reporter
However, as we get older, after everyone comes into contact with WeChat and QQ, it will be difficult for Micro Chat to tie up these primary school students anymore. They began to look to watches with more open permissions.
For example, when the little nephew found that some classmates in the class could use their watches to play games such as "Peace Elite" and "Glory of the King", and his watch only had "pension games" such as feeding chickens and growing vegetables, he had a new goal of a telephone watch.
Because it is so fun, many primary and secondary schools have changed their prohibited items category for this purpose: mobile phones and phone watches are prohibited in school.
Telephone watches are gradually diverging from the "children" audience.
Behind the convenience and security
In order to attract students with more functions, many children's watches on the market are fully open to permissions, and at the same time, they have buried great safety hazards.
In the products tested in the 3.15 laboratory this year, a reporter bought a low-end children's smart watch with a sales volume of 10W+ to do experiments, and found that its Internet access, communication and other functions are readily available.
But when a child scans the QR code and participates in a "lottery game" disguised by a malicious program, the child's location, recordings and even photos will be secretly obtained.
It can not only realize remote control of the watch, but also can continuously collect the child's movement trajectory, circle the child's range of activities, hear the content of the child's chat with the family, and even see the child's appearance and the furnishings at home.
After testing, the fundamental reason why the children's smartwatch exposed privacy is that the operating system is too backward - the 4.4 version is still used today, when the Android version has been updated to 12.0. Under this operating system, the software can get a lot of private information such as location, face, and recording without authorization.
Manufacturers do this for cost considerations, but they will make smart terminals the hardest hit area for personal information leakage. /Figureworm Creative
The 3.15 reporter also experienced another smart watch equipped with the Android 9 system, but found that it refused to provide any service when it refused to authorize.
Either not at all, or trade privacy for these features. For children with incomplete privacy awareness, it is easy to fall into the trap.
The children's watch originally purchased for safety reasons has become a "bugging device" and "voyeur screen" tied to the child, which is terrible to think about.
In addition to privacy leaks, many children's smart watches also do not have the awareness of "underage restriction".
In March 2022, Ms. Liang of Hubei Province reported to the media that the service public account bound to the brand of children's telephone watches she bought for her children pushed an explicit gender topic article with the title.
"Today's children are very precocious, and these articles will have a great impact on their bodies and minds." Ms. Leung expressed concern.
After that, the three WeChat public accounts involved in the incident all posted apology letters, saying that they "forwarded the article due to mistakes."
However, from the positioning of these public accounts, it can be seen that it mainly supports the function of children's smart watches, provides information on growth knowledge and parent-child education, and is specially designed to serve children's telephone watches. If the child wants to activate and use the watch, he must first bind the official account for registration and other related operations.
Users who are so vertical and huge public accounts have repeatedly published explicit articles of both sexes, whether they are "mistakenly forwarded" or want to earn more traffic and benefits through improper means, I think everyone knows it.
Smart tools for kids to explore the world can't turn into potential "content bombs." /Figureworm Creative
Even if the watch is safe and the content is pure, it only has such a versatile children's smart watch with a screen of about 1.4 inches, which is not friendly to the child's visual development.
According to the data disclosed at the press conference of the Ministry of Education of the mainland at the end of October 2021, the overall myopia rate of children and adolescents in the mainland in 2021 is 52.7%.
A receiving doctor at sun yat-sen university eye hospital once found that once the child is diagnosed with myopia, parents will strictly control the time the child touches the electronic screen, but strangely, several children still have less than half a year of myopia and the degree of myopia has increased by about 100 degrees.
After careful questioning and communication, it was learned that parents ignored the small screen on their children's phone watches.
The "anti-addiction" of children's watches still has to be stared at by parents and teachers. /Figureworm Creative
Children's phone watch users are widely used, and as of February 2019 alone, the number of users of children's smart watch APP has reached 46.3 million.
As devices become smarter and more watches function, schools, parents and children will gradually change their attitudes towards children's smart watches.
Compared with blindly map saving trouble, when purchasing phone watches or other children's smart devices, parents should still play a twelve-point spirit and consider on demand.
Reference Articles:
[1] Social hard currency for elementary school students? Little Genius Phone Watch Review.| Bad reviews
[2] "Walking Voyeuristic Artifact"? CCTV 315 unveils the safety hazards of low-end children's smart watches | Modern Express
[3] Media: Children's telephone watches are bound to public accounts to issue gender topics, and they do not do business | Guangming Net