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.

6 Comments

shanghaichica 6 Years · 3 comments

About 2 years ago

Not sure why he’d give an apple watch to a
three year old as a toy.

AppleZulu 8 Years · 2205 comments

shanghaichica said:

Not sure why he’d give an apple watch to a
three year old as a toy.

Because children are very curious about interactive devices adults are using. Not realizing the watch can make such a call, one might otherwise assume that the kid wouldn't even get through the passcode and would just use his imagination to play with it. It's surplussed, so it's not an issue if he somehow breaks it, which isn't even likely because the things are designed to be hard for great big adults to damage. You'd probably be surprised how many hours of fun a kid can have tapping away at the keyboard of an old, unplugged computer.

JFC_PA 7 Years · 947 comments

AppleZulu said:

shanghaichica said:

Not sure why he’d give an apple watch to a
three year old as a toy.

Because children are very curious about interactive devices adults are using. Not realizing the watch can make such a call, one might otherwise assume that the kid wouldn't even get through the passcode and would just use his imagination to play with it. It's surplussed, so it's not an issue if he somehow breaks it, which isn't even likely because the things are designed to be hard for great big adults to damage. You'd probably be surprised how many hours of fun a kid can have tapping away at the keyboard of an old, unplugged computer.

That’s true, when I was little my dad gave me an old camera to carry around when we traveled. As a toddler I happily aimed at things and tripped the shutter, to the marvel of passers by and the quiet amusement of my dad; because I just knew about the point and click part copying my dad; film? What’s film? Camera was empty, didn’t know, didn’t care.

OutdoorAppDeveloper 15 Years · 1292 comments

I would have loved an Apple Watch at that age. It's really too bad that Apple hates this kind of recycling. They love the kind that destroys old devices. This is why it would be a really good idea to allow people to do whatever they want with the devices they own. Someone could create an alternate version of Watch OS for toddlers that allows them to tap on pictures and learn things in the process without risking calls to 911. Apple will say that this is a huge security risk, but is it really?

sdw2001 23 Years · 17460 comments

Love that kid….”No, I can’t. I’m in the cwib and can’t walk.” 🤣