Your child can and will dial 911 on an old Apple Watch

A three-year-old boy in Michigan managed to call emergency services on a disused Apple Watch his mother had given him as a toy.

The father of a three-year-old in Michigan has spoken of how his son dialled 911 from an Apple Watch that the parents believed wasn't connected.

Sooo My 3-year-old just called 911. He took what we thought was a defunct Apple Watch to bed and next thing we know he's talking to 911 on the watch. Here's a clip. Learn from our errors, parents. pic.twitter.com/OUD6EJFyYd
— Leon Hendrix (@LeonHendrix) February 1, 2022

"Okay, take the phone to your mommy so I can talk to her," says a 911 operator in a recording seemingly taken from the family's baby monitor.

According to the father, "when we took the Watch, he says to my wife, "But mom, I was talkin' to everybody!" The parents checked the iPhone the Watch was paired to and discovered that this was his second 911 call of the evening.

The boy's parents also later got a message from the 911 operator who had subsequently seen the footage. "I was the dispatcher who took your son's call last night," she wrote. "Loved seeing them waving goodbye. Adorable."

Making a 911 call on an Apple Watch requires pressing and holding the side button until the Emergency SOS slider appears. Then the toddler can either have swiped to start the call, or just kept holding the button down.

What the boy's parents may not have appreciated is that under US law, any cellular device must be able to call 911 even if it does not have an active cell service.

This ability to press and hold for emergency services is intended to make placing such a call easy even under duress, or when injured. However, separately, police departments are reporting that they get very many accidental calls this way.