How to spy on your aging parents — ethically

My mom was excited and confused when she opened her Apple Watch at Christmas a few years ago.

“What a nice gift!” A pause.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” We told her the truth: A smartwatch can do all kinds of useful things.

Fitness tracking became the thing my mom latched onto.

She loved counting her steps and seeing how many miles she walked in a day.

It motivated her to become more active, too.

We didn’t tell her until much later that the Apple Watch’s fall detection feature was the real reason we got her the watch.

The feature worked, too.

On the coldest day of the year, this past winter, my mom tripped on an uneven sidewalk and broke her wrist.

The Apple Watch called 911 almost as soon as she hit the ground, and we took an ambulance to the hospital, where my sister, who was nearly a thousand miles away, texted and asked what was wrong.

She’d been watching my mom’s location on Apple’s Find My app, a fact that we revealed to my mom for the first time when she was in the emergency room.

We also had to confess that the Nest security cam we’d set up in her living room was indeed useful in spotting intruders but also let us check in on her from time to time.

My mom wasn’t thrilled about any of this.

She realized that these handy gadgets doubled as surveillance devices, and we’d essentially be spying on her.