Why You Can't Rely on Skechers' AirTag Sneakers to Track Your Kids

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Why You Can't Rely on Skechers' AirTag Sneakers to Track Your Kids

If you want to keep tabs on your kids, but don't want to give them a smartphone or smartwatch yet, an AirTag seems like it'd be the perfect solution—especially if that AirTag was designed to sneakily slip inside their sneaker.

That's the idea behind Skechers' new sneaker line for kids, dubbed, appropriately, Find My Skechers. The pitch is simple: For all intents and purposes, these are your average children's sneakers, save for a clever AirTag compartment hidden underneath the insert. It seems smart: You lift up the insert, pop out the plastic cover, pop in an AirTag, and cover the whole thing up. Then, you send your kid off into the world, knowing you can track their whereabouts at any time.

   

Unfortunately, that's not how AirTags work. AirTags can be a great tool for keeping a general eye on important items in your life, but they aren't made for live tracking. As such, they really aren't ideal for constant real-time updates, which means they aren't dependable for tracking your kids. Sorry, Skechers.     

How AirTags work

Contrary to popular belief, AirTags are not homing beacons that can update their location 24/7. Alone, these tags have no way of updating their location. They lack a GPS chip, or any way to communicate with the internet themselves. Instead, they rely on other devices to update their location for them.

Any Apple device connected to Apple's Find My network can update the location of your AirTag when it comes within Bluetooth range of the tracker. The whole system is passive and anonymous, so no one, not even Apple, knows which devices update the location of your AirTag. But it works: If you leave an item with an AirTag on a bus, for example, anyone on the bus with an iPhone can, unbeknownst to them, refresh your AirTag's location.

The magic behind how AirTags work is also the reason why they're not reliable for live tracking. Without another internet-connected Find My device within Bluetooth range, your AirTag won't be able to update its location. If your kid isn't within Bluetooth range of another person with such a Find My device, for example, you won't see their latest location—just the last known location where they were within range of a Find My device.

But even when they are in range, AirTags tend to be pretty sporadic in how often they refresh their location. As Lifehacker deputy editor Joel Cunningham discovered, sometimes locations wouldn't update for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. Occasionally, the AirTag wouldn't update its location at all. So much for tracking.

You'll need a GPS device to track your kids

That all to say, there's no harm in putting an AirTag in one of these Skechers sneakers. If nothing else, you'll be able to see your kid's approximate location, at least relative to when they were last within range of a Find My device. It's just important to understand that this isn't the tool for you if your main concern is round-the-clock surveillance. For that, you'll need a GPS-ready device—either a smartphone, smartwatch, or a dedicated GPS tracker. (The latter, unfortunately, typically comes with a subscription.)

Source: Why You Can't Rely on Skechers' AirTag Sneakers to Track Your Kids