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Google is Quietly Working on a Wearable Device for Preteens (businessinsider.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Google is developing a wearable device for preteens under its Fitbit group as it attempts to capture a growing demographic of younger users who own wearable tech, Insider reported this week, citing three employees familiar with the project. From the report: Internally code-named "Project Eleven," the wearable is designed to help older kids form healthy relationships with their phones and social media, two of the employees said. One of them said the device could include safety features that would let parents contact their children and know their whereabouts. Google's Australia Fitbit team, headed by Anil Sabharwal, a vice president of special projects, is leading work on Project Eleven, according to internal data seen by Insider. One employee said the device was set for launch sometime in 2024, but employees emphasized that the project had a long way to go and plans could change.
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Google is Quietly Working on a Wearable Device for Preteens More

Google is Quietly Working on a Wearable Device for Preteens

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  • like a creepy old man (Score:5, Interesting)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @11:23AM (#63038419)

    Hi little girl, would you like some wearable candy? Just agree to let me track everything you do, you don't need to get in the van but it will follow you around.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Barny ( 103770 )

      Basically this.

      FFS, can't these creepy sociopaths even wait for the kids to reach their majority?

      • FFS, can't these creepy sociopaths even wait for the kids to reach their majority?

        No. No they can't [washingtonexaminer.com].

      • Basically this.

        FFS, can't these creepy sociopaths even wait for the kids to reach their majority?

        Why would they wait around to turn your kids into The Product?

        (Let their own kids use it? That would be a hard fuck no. Tends to say a lot, doesn't it.)

      • The logic is precisely the same as those selling street drugs (nicotine, alcohol, heroin) at the school gates - this years "loss leader" giveaways provide next year's completely-hooked addicts.

        Also, those trying to hook the underage and deficient-of-thinking into using $self-abusive-product$ by using advertising in mainstream media, movies etc are also in the same game.

    • Re:like a creepy old man (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @11:37AM (#63038475)

      This part is gold as well:
      >the wearable is designed to help older kids form healthy relationships with their phones and social media
      The only healthy relationship a child can have with his phone and social media is: The less they use them, the better.

      • 70s kids had a very healthy relationship with their phone... because it was in the house, and they generally weren't.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cob666 ( 656740 )

        This part is gold as well: >the wearable is designed to help older kids form healthy relationships with their phones and social media The only healthy relationship a child can have with his phone and social media is: The less they use them, the better.

        Most social media sites require that the user be at least 13 years old so not sure how this is supposed to work...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, they could then sell the tracking data, sound recordings, video recordings and maybe even direct interactive access, etc. to a whole, still underdeveloped consumer group! At the moment, practicing pedos only generate profits for law enforcement and the prison industry and that is clearly not the best use society can have for them. I applaud Google's dedication in generating business and profit in this area. Finally they start to realize their true business potential by dropping silly pretenses about

    • Presumably, the wearable will be an ankle bracelet that the pre-teens can't remove themselves. Will alert guards... ahem, guardians when inmates... ahem, pre-teens deviate from predetermined areas or routes.
      • You thought of ankle bracelets but didn't think, immediately, of chastity belts? What sort of country do you live in?
        • One that isn't run by the descendants of the Puritans & religious extremists that were kicked out of Yurp.
          • Lucky you. I'm sure there are many thousands of American Puritans profoundly intent upon saving your soul - whether you want it or not, and at the cost of your life if possible.
            • No, I live in one of those godforsaken, socialist, atheist Yurpeen countries. Perhaps the religion here isn't doing too well because they nationalised it a long time ago? The religious devotees that are left seem to be into public displays of some pretty hardcore BDSM stuff. Not so sure that all of them are actually believers. Almost too painful to watch those processions!
              • I was planning to attend the Orange Lodge (maniac fringe of Christianity, as best as I can make out) march in town to celebrate the genocide of the Boyne earlier this year - with the intention of turning my back on them at as many points of the march route as possible. But I had a hangover that day, and didn't consider them important enough to be worth insulting. Some Americans would be deeply upset by being considered so unimportant. But they're not worth worrying about. (Their guns, OTOH ... which is ampl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Creepy helicopter parents.

      This will sell because parents who are scared of screen time and their child seeing a penis or vagina online still want to track their kids.

      I have really begun to understand the paranoia of parents. Each generation has more information, information that is really no use to them, on what their kids are doing, and increased expectation to use it. I was reading about adolescence, and the advent of not only keeping essentially sexually mature kids in the house, but the expectation

      • Well, at least we'll finally get people that value their privacy as adults because they had none as kids.

    • This, yes. MORE SURVEILLANCE. Surprised they aren't working on some 'wearable' designed for infants so they can get a whole generation used to the idea from birth that being surveilled constantly is 'normal' and 'good'. Fuckers.

  • "This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers."

    HAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

    GFY [gadgetany.com]

    The more you link paywalled stories, the less respect we have for your whole organization

  • Google is developing a wearable device for preteens under its Fitbit group as it attempts to capture a growing demographic of pedophiles.

    Fixed that.

  • Oh noes! Google wants to steal your children!
  • It's called Android. Let me know if you want training on how to Venn-test Android and keep it out of your kids' lives. Try a regular computer, also known as a person, instead.

  • Seriously? (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @12:35PM (#63038609)

    "Project Eleven"... Google's Australia Fitbit team...

    So yeah, this definitely has "upside-down" vibes.
    #StrangerThings

  • media? Healthy means no relationship.

  • We actually do need to low-jack our kids for their own safety; and having it be something they would want to wear makes it easier.

  • When I was younger, I had all sorts of ideas of how helpful tracking all sorts of run of the mill data about my life and habits and how interesting it would be.

    Now, instead of a maker / data geek paradise of charting and reflecting on a birds-eye-view of my day . . . we have all but required tracking of everything and no access to our own data.

    Never would I guess that the 'eye in the sky' would be money mongers instead of a despotic 1984-esque government.

    Crud.

    • Never would I guess that the 'eye in the sky' would be money mongers instead of a despotic 1984-esque government.

      Those things are mutually exclusive?

      • Never would I guess that the 'eye in the sky' would be money mongers instead of a despotic 1984-esque government.

        Those things are mutually exclusive?

        Wankers like the current lot make Bond villains look like men of deep substance.

        Soulless oligarchs should have traded their soul for something. Todays Billionaires are more like 'born without eyebrows' soulless . . . like it atrophied in the womb.

  • ... that Google's intentions are entirely benign.

    I know what you're thinking. but momentarily put aside any distrust of the mega corporation and let's assume that they supposedly have the best of all possible intentions for our children.

    The actual problem here is that not everyone in the world *does* have the best of intentions, and the more data that Google has about your location and activities, the more data that it is possible for a bad actor (whether or not they are from within Google itself) to g

  • I see all kinds of problems with this. Not only the tracking of a kid's location, but also their vitals... In an age where women are needing to uninstall and stop using fertility tracking apps, a device like this could easily monitor things like that without the end user's knowledge, and then that data can end up in court.

    No.

  • It's a shock collar, right?

    • Hey, if it was I would indeed have an incentive to hack it. Why bother trying to contact kids, but shock these obnoxious little brat 'til they fall over and finally shut up, I can get behind that!

  • The most frustrating part about diapers — in my opinion — is not knowing, whether a replacement is in order... You don't want the kid to be wet, but you don't want to disturb him with a check unnecessarily either...

    It'd seem, that embedding some wetness indicator would be easy, but no one has done it yet. How about it, geniuses of Google?

  • the wearable is designed to help older kids form healthy relationships with their phones and social media

    Never mind - I guess the answer to the question I asked in the Subject is already painfully obvious.

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