Parental Perspectives on the Use of Smartwatch Activity Trackers by Young Children: Qualitative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Smartwatch activity trackers are devices that measure physical activity levels with features that aim to encourage physically active behaviors. These devices have shown promise for increasing physical activity levels and reducing sedentary behaviors among school-aged children, adolescents, and adults. Recently, commercially available products have been adapted so that they are suitable for use by preschool-aged children. However, it is unclear whether the intended use of these devices is feasible and effective in young children. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to explore parents' perspectives on the use of smartwatch activity trackers by young children. METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted with 22 parents (17/22, 77% female) of children aged 3-5 years. Interviews explored perspectives on the feasibility of their children wearing the devices, implications of use by young children, and how families could make use of these devices to support their children's physically active behaviors. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and data analyzed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Parents perceived that the use of these devices by young children is feasible, with developmental stage or abilities and personality or temperament being important individual determinants of feasibility. However, parents expressed concerns related to the devices providing extrinsic motivation to move, being disruptive or distracting, being a burden on parents, and for the safety and privacy of their child's information. Most parents believed that young children are inherently active and do not need devices to support physical activity. Furthermore, most parents expressed an interest in knowing how physically active their children were and thought that there may be a role for these devices for children who are less physically active. CONCLUSIONS: Parents reported developmental stage or abilities and temperament as relevant considerations related to the feasibility of smartwatch activity tracker use by young children. Parents also indicated that there is a potential role for these devices in young, less active children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".