Smartwatches and Seniors—The Benefits Are Overwhelming!
The holiday season is quickly coming, and that means it’s time to start shopping for relatives. Out of all of the people you need to buy for, older folks can be a bit of a challenge at times since they can be quite picky and don’t always enjoy new tech-based gifts. However, that’s what we’re going to recommend for you today because we believe smartwatches are the perfect gift for the older generation.
If you don’t believe us, you’ll have to keep reading to see how the benefits of smartwatches for seniors are overwhelming. We’re positive that your parents or other elderly family members will fall in love with them after finding out all they can do for them.
Keeping Things Basic
The biggest issue many seniors have with advanced technology is how confusing it can be. Fortunately, smartwatches are simple by design. Since their screens are much smaller than a phone’s, they have to be, or else nothing would be able to fit. Most have a clean, easy-to-read UI that is very user-friendly and doesn’t overcomplicate things.
Plus, if you buy one made specifically for older people, it will be even more simple. We made our safety watch for seniors specifically with this idea in mind. We don’t want to confuse our userbase, so we do what we can to make our UI as straightforward as possible.
Helping Them Stay Connected
The main way you will be able to sell the idea of using a smartwatch to your parents is to tell them how easy it will be to stay connected to you and their grandchildren with this device. A large majority of grandparents will jump on whatever opportunity they can get to talk to your kids.
With a watch, seniors can call, text, or even video chat with anyone in their contact list with ease. The only problem you’d have to worry about is that they try to contact you too often with how easy it’ll be for them, but that’s certainly not a bad thing.
Monitoring Certain Vital Signs
Now it’s time to get into some of the more significant benefits of these devices. Depending on the age of the person you’re buying this for, they could be dealing with a lot of health issues. While this watch obviously won’t be able to fix any of them, it can make them easier to manage. Many smartwatches for the elderly come with vital sign monitoring built in. The main ones tracked are blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, and blood oxygen levels.
These stats will be useful for you to know, but they’ll also be helpful to their doctor. Health care professionals only get to see a small snapshot of a person’s vital signs when they come in for a check-up. Having a detailed list of these numbers will help doctors better understand how the patient’s body has been doing in the past few weeks, making diagnosis easier and more accurate.
In addition to vital signs tracking, these watches can also detect if the user has fallen and call for an emergency response vehicle. You can also set them up to notify loved ones if something has gone wrong. This will help keep older family members much safer if they are living on their own.
Tracking Workouts
Not all of a smartwatch’s health benefits focus on the health topic’s negative side, though. You can also use these devices for tracking fitness activities. Most notably, they can record how many steps the user has taken throughout the day.
If your older relatives are more actively into exercising, their watches can track more than just that. For example, these smartwatches can record where a person went on their run as well as how fast they were going during it. On top of that, the vital sign monitor that we’ve mentioned can give them even more details on how much they exerted themselves during their workout.
Giving Them Easy-To-Use GPS
One problem that many seniors have to deal with is not knowing the location of a new place they want to go to. Whether it’s nearby or far away, finding accurate directions can be a challenge. That’s why they will eventually learn to love these watches. Most of them have built-in GPS. As long as they have the address of the place they want to go to, they will be able to get there quite easily.
We want to note, however, that they shouldn’t look at their devices while driving. Fortunately, the device can give directions to them out loud via the voice assistant. That way, they’ll know when and where to turn.
The possibilities for GPS don’t end there, though. You can use it to keep track of your aging parents or other family members. If you’re worried about them wandering off and getting lost, you can usually set up a geofence that will notify you when they cross it. Then you can easily call them or send someone to their location if they live far away and need help. This will help you have some more peace of mind.
Allowing More Independence
While the benefits of smartwatches for seniors are overwhelming, the key one we’d like to make sure you’re aware of is how it helps them get their independence back. Many older folks feel like they lose their freedom with age, especially when they need constant help.
Having a device like this will help them get some of it back. Seniors can go off on their own and know that help is a simple phone call away. Thanks to the GPS, they won’t even need to tell the person where they are. They can just sit there and wait to get picked up. While it might not be ideal for all older people, many will find this a freeing experience.
Which One Should You Get Them?
As we previously mentioned, there are a ton of smartwatches on the market, and a good amount of them are made with seniors in mind. However, we’ve made it easy for you today, but our smartwatch offers all of the benefits we’ve talked about in this blog post. If these all sound like must-haves for the older relative in your life, then be sure to check it out. We’re sure neither of you will be disappointed.
