Parents worried about sending their kids trick-or-treating alone this Halloween can now use technology that not only tracks their every move — but warns them when their children are near a reported crime or other dangerous incident.
A growing assortment of apps and gadgets from companies including family safety app Life360, Verizon, Apple and TickTalk lets parents monitor their children’s locations, establish virtual boundaries, receive alerts about nearby crimes and even find out when a child removes a GPS-equipped smartwatch.
Wireless giant Verizon is promoting its Gizmo Watch 4, a children’s smartwatch introduced in July that allows parents to monitor their kids’ locations and establish virtual boundaries.
The device can even notify parents when a child removes the watch from their wrist.
Verizon is touting the gadget’s GPS location sharing, boundary alerts and parent-approved contacts as tools to help children venture out with greater independence.
The watch, which also supports video calls, connects to the Verizon Family app, allowing parents to manage its tracking and safety features.
Apple is also competing for parents seeking to monitor their children without handing them smartphones.
Its Apple Watch For Your Kids feature lets parents use the Find My app to check their children’s whereabouts and receive notifications when they arrive at or leave designated locations.
The watches can be configured through a parent’s iPhone, allowing children to make calls and send messages without owning an iPhone themselves.
Another competitor, TickTalk, unveiled its TickTalk 6 smartwatch earlier this month, targeting children ages 3 to 12.
The $169.99 device offers GPS tracking, calling, messaging and emergency SOS capabilities without giving children access to social media or the open internet.
Parents can also review their children’s recent routes through the companion app.
TickTalk, which requires a separate wireless subscription starting at $9.99 a month, has been marketing the device specifically for Halloween.
Life360 is among the companies pitching those tools, offering a feature that alerts parents to serious incidents reported within a mile of a family member’s location.
Life360’s “Safety Incidents” feature sends notifications when a qualifying event has occurred within the previous six hours and within a mile of any member of a family’s private, opt-in location-sharing group, known as a Circle.
The warnings are based on reported incidents in the surrounding area — not evidence that a particular child is in danger.
Users can tap a yellow warning symbol on the app’s map to get details about an incident and contact family members nearby.
Life360 said the incident information is updated every 30 minutes, with alerts displaying the type, location and time of the reported event.
Since launching the feature in late April 2026, Life360 has displayed approximately 2 million safety incidents in its app across more than 100 cities.
Users can also switch the notifications on or off at any time through the app’s Map Layers settings.
The feature is available in the US, although free users are limited to viewing details of three incidents within 24 hours. Those seeking more access must upgrade to the company’s Gold or Platinum subscription plans.
Life360 said more than 100,000 new Circles were created on Halloween last year. The company also reported a 9% increase in app openings per person, although it did not specify the comparison period.
The figures highlight the appeal of family-tracking technology for Life360, which reported 102.4 million monthly active users and 3.2 million paying Circles as of June 30.
The company posted second-quarter revenue of $159 million, a 38% jump from a year earlier, fueled by growth in subscriptions and advertising, according to its financial results.
Samsung and parental-control company Bark also entered the fray in September with a new Bark Watch built on the Galaxy Watch8.
The device combines GPS location tracking with software that monitors messages for potentially harmful content.
Bark charges $10 a month over 24 months for the watch, plus $15 monthly for cellular service and parental controls.
The growing array of products comes amid evidence that parents are increasingly comfortable using electronic monitoring to supervise Halloween activities.
A Verizon-commissioned Morning Consult survey released last year found that 75% of parents planned to use location-sharing apps to monitor their children’s trick-or-treating routes, while 69% planned to use wearable devices with location capabilities.
âHalloween is one of those times when parents really feel the push and pull between wanting to keep their kids safe and wanting to give them more independence,â Kati Morton, Life360âs family dynamics expert, told The Post.
âBut giving kids freedom doesn’t mean we have to stop looking out for them. While families could agree on a route, a check-in plan, and a time to be home on Halloween, technology like Life360âs Safety Incidents feature can help support that independence, acting as a digital safety net so parents can act if their child is near a situation theyâre concerned about.â
