Smart band for teens lets them game, check tweets and express their personality

The NEX band is a modular bracelet designed to let young users send secret messages, unlock game levels and personalize their look.

While existing smartwatches might let anyone push their smartphone notifications to their wrist, that’s perhaps not enough of a pull to sway the teen market. Offering a plethora of functionality and customization, the NEX band is a modular bracelet designed to let young users send secret messages, unlock game levels and personalize their look.

Each band is a plastic ring capable of holding five different ‘mods’ — small LED modules that are decorative and have their own function when connected to the wearers’ smartphone. Like smartwatches, the modules can light up in different ways to indicate a new received text message, phone call or social activity from Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat, as well as real world activities such as another NEX-wearing friend coming into proximity. Friends can set up coded light messages to each other, assigning certain colors and patterns to different friends or meanings.

With a wide variety of mods, they can be mixed and matched to express users’ personality, but they also unlock new functionalities as they’re collected and combined. Games played through the NEX app can become more interactive with certain mods, as well as unlock new levels. Friends can give away and swap their mods with others, attaching videos, messages and easter eggs before they do so, and each mod’s location can be tracked so they can see where it’s been once they’ve gifted it.

NEX offers young people a range of social activities from sharing, playing, trading and collecting that goes way beyond existing and popular smart bracelets like the Nike+ FuelBand. Are there other ways to engage kids with new wearable tech?