When I gave my parents their first Apple Watch, my 70-year-old mother still signs her text messages with “I love you, Mom” and never wears anything on her wrist except a delicate analog watch and a carefully selected bracelet. My tech-savvy and curious father thought the Apple Watch was a waste of money and would never wear one.
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I’ve been teaching people how to use technology for over a decade at CNET, and I think I’m pretty good at it. But there’s nothing more humiliating for a tech reporter than having to teach your parents how to use a new device, much less one they have no interest in. Selling the Apple Watch wasn’t easy, but it was well worth the effort, as it allowed me to keep track of my elderly parents far away.
In the decade since the Apple Watch was introduced, the device has found a foothold by pivoting away from fashion and towards health monitoring. Features include heart rate notifications, atrial fibrillation history, fall detection, and cycle tracking. Analysts expect this focus to continue in the next model, which many believe will be unveiled at an Apple event later this year.
My parents love the Apple Watch.
Life Alert on your wrist
My parents are in their 70s but still fully mobile and able to get around the house and beyond. Suggesting that they wear a device like Life Alert to monitor for falls would be uncomfortable for them. The Apple Watch does this unobtrusively, regardless of age, avoiding an awkward conversation.
Apple Watch (Series 4 and later, SE and Ultra models) can detect when the wearer has had a hard fall, whether at home or on a hike, and will call emergency services if the wearer is unresponsive for more than a minute. It will also text the wearer’s precise location to an emergency contact (in this case, me). I’ve been fortunate enough to not have direct experience with this feature, but I’ve written about people who have had it save their lives.
ECG and Heart Health Warning
The health feature that impressed me was the electrocardiogram, available on Series 4 and later and Ultra models (but not SE models). When I tested the Apple Watch Series 4’s ECG feature against a hospital-grade EKG in 2018, my doctor noticed irregularities in my chart. Both the Apple Watch’s ECG and the hospital-grade EKG showed that my heart was occasionally skipping beats. Further investigation revealed that it was due to stress and was completely harmless, but the experience highlighted how well the Apple Watch performed against medical devices. This feature, along with heart rate alerts, which notify the wearer when their heart rate drops below or above healthy thresholds, and arrhythmia notifications, which alert them to irregular heart rhythms, were my main selling points when pitching the watch to my parents.
Sure enough, about a year after wearing the Apple Watch, my dad started getting alerts about his low heart rate after runs. Even though he’d rather run than admit defeat after breaking his ankle, my dad is a stoic man who doesn’t go to the doctor unless it’s absolutely necessary. Thanks to the Apple Watch, he was more willing to undergo a full heart exam. Though his symptoms weren’t serious, he now knows how to pace himself so as not to overstress his heart.
The ring that sealed the deal
I’m a millennial with near 20/20 vision, and I still find the Apple Watch’s screen too small and difficult to navigate. Now imagine a 6’7″ Baby Boomer with thick fingers and poor eyesight. Despite its impressive health features, there’s little chance he’d choose it over an analog watch for everyday use.
A competitive spirit was born. The Apple Watch tracks your physical activity using a three-ring system that takes into account how often you move, exercise, and get up. The goal is to tighten an Activity ring each day to earn badges and compete against friends. When someone on the list completes a workout or tightens a ring, the user is notified and given the option to join in a friendly competition. This worked well for my dad; we started competing to see who could tighten a ring more often, but when that got boring (he beat me most of the time), he kept it for himself.
My mom isn’t super obsessed with wearing rings, but she does use the watch as a barometer for how much she’s moving, or not, throughout the day, and unlike other trackers she’s tried and forgotten about, the Apple Watch provides visual cues on the watch face and sends notifications when she’s running late.
Find my phone, find my mom
My efforts at persuasion paid off.
The beauty of having technology on your wrist almost 24/7 is that it’s easy to find — and that means you can find yourself. The time saved by Find My on your Apple Watch is invaluable, especially when you’re in a hurry to get out the door. With a single tap on the screen, you can notify your iPhone or find other devices or people in the Find My app.
I also set up location sharing with my parents, so if they forget their phones, I can use the Find My app on my iPhone or Apple Watch to locate them.
With my parents’ Apple Watch obsession and my self-esteem soaring, I set my sights on my in-laws. The following Christmas, my husband and I gifted my in-laws with two Apple Watches (SE), giving them the same gift we’d given to our parents and waiting in anticipation to see if we’d get the same results.
It’s been over a year now and we’re still waiting. Because they my I can’t be as pushy with my parents as I was with my own, and I’m not sure my father-in-law would enjoy a friendly ring-tying contest as much as my dad did. I might have to resort to other persuasion tactics, like pointing them to a CNET article about the benefits of the Apple Watch for seniors. I’ll report back when I do.
