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Yesterday a 2.5 year old played with my Apple Watch

I

iBug2

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 12, 2005
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I was visiting a friend, her youngster, a 2.5 year old, saw my watch and said "Hey Apple Watch". I was like, how the hell does she know about Apple Watch? She ran to me and started playing with the Watch, touched the weather icon, then asked me how to see the weather tomorrow, started scrolling through the weather forecast and then found it. She doesn't even know how to count, but she figured out how to check the weather.

It was weird to witness that someone that young can actually use this thing.
 
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That really interesting to hear about. I remember the first rev of the  iPhone and touch  did tons of focus groups to best understand how people would use their technology but from a user interface standpoint. When I was an  employee it was right up there as important as customer satisfaction.

Cool story iBug2. Thanks for sharing.
 
Reminds me of something I saw a few years ago. I was on break, at work, and there were a couple 3-4 year olds talking about a new iPhone that was about to come out, and how it was great because you could check your emails too. (Just for reference, they were talking about the iPhone 5, and the most noteworthy thing to me was that they were talking about emails at that age).
 
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I have a 10 month old granddaughter that loves to play with mine. She can't say "Apple Watch" yet, but she still grabs at it, pushes on the screen and scrolls around within the interface.

Her other grandparents don't have Watches, so by default, I'm her favorite!
 
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my two year old godson always grabs my iphone and then comes walking up to me pointing at the touchid for me to unlock it so he can watch animals on youtube lol
 
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My 2.5 year old has been selecting videos for himself on our phones for nearly a year. In fact, we just got him his own so he doesnt drain our batteries on car trips (and because we had a free extra line we weren't paying for). It's rather amazing what these kids are capable of!
 
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We have a 3 year old and a 5 year old, and they can both easily navigate an iPhone or iPad. My 5 year old can use a computer mouse as well, but the touchscreen on the iOS devices was much more intuitive to her. I don't hand over the watch, but sometimes I let them play with it while it's on my wrist. They are mostly interested in watching the butterflies, jellyfish or flowers on the motion face. That has actually helped me stop a couple of public tantrums.
 
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I second all these sentiments.

My daughter who is 2 years 3 months old can switch between Videos and Nick Jr. on her iPad. She can switch between TV Shows and Movies in the videos app. It's pretty crazy. She also LOVES loves looking at photos.

So she'll come to my apple watch, hit the crown in, scroll to the photos app, open it, and then click on the pictures to enlarge them. It's pretty amazing to watch.
 
Andres Cantu said:
I would lean more towards touch screens being so intuitive. Steve really hit a home run with multi-touch.
Click to expand...

I agree. It also helps that they are still learning and open to knowledge. It's harder when you learn how to do something for so long and then it switches and you have to learn something new. That's why I think it's harder for some, not all, older people to learn technology. It's not a gift that our younger generation has inherited, it's an openness that has a tendency to be lost over time.
 
My 2.5 year old talks to my watch and asks it to turn the lights on! He's obviously seen me asking siri to turn on the lights before!
 
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Recognition said:
My 2.5 year old talks to my watch and asks it to turn the lights on! He's obviously seen me asking siri to turn on the lights before!
Click to expand...

I have a similar problem at home. Whenever I ask Siri to do something (usually it's to set a timer or turn on our lights), the kids get excited and ask me what I'm asking Siri to do. Fortunately they haven't tried to ask Siri anything just yet. :)
 
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My 1.5 year old daughter was able to learn how to navigate our iphones and once we unlock the phone she knows how to watch youtube videos, hit the home button, open up Netflix, hit the home button, play some of the baby first games, etc.

While it's cute, I also worry about the negative impact it has. We try to limit her time on the iPhone but she'll put up a decent fight if we don't let her.
 
When my nephew was 2, so about 4 years ago. When I would give him my phone, he would go in and change all my tones for notifications and he would pick which one he wanted. I would change it back. The next time he had my phone, he would go in and change them back to what he had previously picked. Its crazy that a 2 year old can so easily navigate iOS.
 
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btrach144 said:
My 1.5 year old daughter was able to learn how to navigate our iphones and once we unlock the phone she knows how to watch youtube videos, hit the home button, open up Netflix, hit the home button, play some of the baby first games, etc.

While it's cute, I also worry about the negative impact it has. We try to limit her time on the iPhone but she'll put up a decent fight if we don't let her.
Click to expand...

I think the first indication to us that we should definitely limit access to our iPhones or iPads was when our toddlers started trying to swipe across framed photos to see the next one! :D

We don't actually let our kids use these devices too much...we have some old iPhone 3G's loaded with a few simple games they can play with. The batteries don't last that long, so we don't need to worry about restricting access too much. Those old 3G's are surprisingly tough by the way. I've noticed that our kids will get really interested in a few games or looking at pictures/videos. Then they will kind of forget about them and start playing with something else.

One thing I learned: Kids love videos, and they quickly learned to recognize the "Play Now" symbol over an image that shows it's a video or animated gif.
 
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