'Shows location down to the floor': How Chinese 'helicopter parents' are strapping smartwatches on their kids

When Jane Ding's son set off on his first kindergarten field trip, she spent the whole day anxious he might get lost. The couple's solution was a children's smartwatch — by now a near-essential item among urban parents in China.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (local time) that the smartwatch made by Chinese brand Xiaotiancha — sold under the name Little Genius — has won a strong following among Chinese parents for its GPS tracking and video-calling features. Ding's son Larix, now 8, wears one every time he goes out. "There are so many useful functions for parents," Ding said.

Chinese state media reports that roughly one in three children between the ages of 5 and 12 in China owns such a smartwatch, a share that climbs to well above half in urban areas. Little Genius, marketed abroad under the name Imoo, launched its first product in 2015 and has since come to dominate the global market. According to market research firm Counterpoint Research, global sales of smartwatches for children and teenagers topped $1 billion in the first half of this year, with Little Genius accounting for nearly half of that. China alone drives 58 percent of worldwide sales.

Prices start in the low 100,000-won ($74) range and can exceed 400,000 won for premium models. The watches take a SIM card like a smartphone and support mobile payments, allowing parents to preload funds so children can pay on their own. Some models offer three-dimensional location tracking precise enough to show which floor of a building a child is on. Larix's father, Jimmy Puek, 40, said he would have been deeply uneasy without it. "I would have had to constantly worry about whether I could see my child," he said.

Part of Little Genius's appeal lies in a social feature: two children wearing the same brand of watch can become "friends" simply by tapping their wrists together, unlocking a dedicated social network where they can chat, like posts and leave comments. The catch is that watches from Apple, Xiaomi and Huawei are incompatible, which has quietly created a peer-pressure dynamic among parents — if everyone else has one, you need one too.

Critics have raised concerns. Chinese state media and social media platforms have consistently flagged worries that children could become addicted to the devices or feel inadequate when comparing themselves with peers. Many schools have banned the watches from classrooms. Zhang Kai, 48, who has two children, recently bought each of them a watch worth around 300,000 won, yet still worries his kids might feel self-conscious next to friends wearing pricier models.

For many parents, however, the watches represent a far safer alternative to smartphones, which expose children to the open internet without restriction. Parents can control who appears in the contact list and which apps and games the child can access. Zhang Hongli, 39, who has no plans to buy her daughter a smartphone until she starts university, said a smartphone is "much harder to control than a watch." She uses a Little Genius watch to track her daughter's location and stay in touch by phone.