Hidden ways technology can influence your parenting decisions

From pregnancy tracking apps to smart baby monitors, technology is ingrained in parenthood at every turn. But at what cost? In this episode, Amanda Hess, author of Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age, shares how data, metrics and our relationship to technology can shape child-rearing — and create barriers between parents and their kids. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from NPR sponsor Viore with the Halo Essential Wide-Like Pant. Receive 20% off your first purchase at viore.com/NPR on any US orders over $75 and free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  You're listening to Life Kit.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  From NPR.

• 0:24Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, it's Marielle.

• 0:27Marielle Segarra?

  When Amanda Hess found out she was pregnant with her first kid, she was home alone. She'd just taken a pregnancy test.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  I immediately Googled what to do when you get pregnant. That was a pretty good clue to the internet that I was pregnant now.

• 0:42Marielle Segarra?

  Amanda is a critic at large at The New York Times and the author of Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  I think one of the things that's so insidious about pregnancy-related tech is that a lot of people are not discussing their pregnancies much, especially at the very beginning of them. I told the internet about my pregnancy before I told anyone else, even my husband. I wanted to wait for him to come home to tell him.

• 1:06Marielle Segarra?

  As a writer covering the intersection of the internet and pop culture, Amanda was probably more familiar than most with all the subtle, surprising ways technology can embed itself in our lives. Through our fitness trackers, or those games we play on our phones while we're on the subway. But when she got pregnant, her relationship to the internet got complicated in a way she really didn't want or expect.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  The way that I use the internet was to put in any feeling or information that I maybe felt a little ashamed of speaking to anyone else about. So it just becomes this repository for all of my fears and my weird body stuff and stuff like that. I just fed that. To these apps and systems that exist to try to make money off of me.

• 2:00Marielle Segarra?

  It happens so fast. Amanda was served ads for products like prenatal vitamins within 48 hours of her first pregnancy-related internet search. To put it bluntly, her pregnancy had market value. Although the numbers might surprise you. According to Amanda's research, some online data brokers, those are companies that collect, aggregate, and sell your personal information, charge a mere $85 per 1,000 pregnant consumers. Another charges 95, and for an additional $10, you could buy 1,000 due dates for those 1,000 babies. For context, that's about the same as it would cost to buy the data of someone who has obsessive-compulsive disorder and purchases CBD products, and less than someone who purchased

• 2:45Marielle Segarra?

  a Donald Trump-themed chess set. The point is, when you're pregnant and you share that information with the internet, that pretty cheap to data brokers but completely priceless to you information is used to influence your decisions at one of the most vulnerable times in your life. Before Amanda got pregnant, she understood that websites were tracking her and serving her ads based on her personal data, but she didn't really see the harm. So what if some website collected cookies on the type of pants she likes to buy? Maybe that would eventually lead her to the perfect pair of jeans.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  But I was so vulnerable in this moment where, like, babies really do need some strange things that I had never considered before. And then there's a lot of stuff that they don't need, that these companies were soon eager to sell me. And those decisions, you know, really, I think, set the tone for me for how I was going to relate to my child, like, how I was going to parent them. And for so many reasons, in pregnancy, the stakes of my online life were just raised in that way.

• 4:00Marielle Segarra?

  On this episode of Life Kit, reporter Andy Tagle talks to Amanda Hess about how her experience of becoming a mother changed her relationship to the internet and what we can all learn about the invisible ways technology affects how we think about pregnancy and parenting. We'll talk about how the internet serves us an unrealistic portrayal of parenting, how to decide if and when you need all that high-tech baby gear, and how to work through those complicated feelings when you post your kids' pictures on social media.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from KeyBank. Growing a successful business isn't easy. That's why KeyBank offers strategies to help your business grow today and into the future. Reimagine business as usual. KeyBank opens doors. More at key.com/b2b.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  This message comes from Midi Health. Most women never get real answers about their hormonal health. Midi is changing that with virtual care covered by most major insurances. Understand your hormones. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit today.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  This message comes from Bowlin Branch. Change the way you sleep with soft 100% organic cotton bedding from Bowlin Branch. Designed to help you fall asleep faster and never sleep hot while wrapped in luxurious comfort, airy blankets, cloud-like duvets, and breathable sheets. Experience pure comfort and feel your bedding get softer with every wash. Discover the difference with 15% off your first order at bowlinbranch.com with code NPR. Exclusions apply. See site for details.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Could you share a little bit about your experience, you know, finding out that you were pregnant and finding out how seemingly all the mommy companies knew you were pregnant?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I found that when I got pregnant, my relationship with technology deepened in this really complex way. I've been writing about internet culture and technology for a long time. And so I had this relationship where I was very used to going in and examining some online phenomenon or downloading an app. Writing about it and then like deleting it. And getting out and moving on to the next thing. And when I got pregnant, I found that this critical distance that I had between myself and technology products had like completely collapsed.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  And I was reading them, you know, as this like really naive consumer again, where they took on an almost like magical, mystical force for me. I don't know how many other people had this experience, but I thought about pregnancy as like a time when you're just like allowed to eat like ice cream and like pickles at the same time. And what I learned from these like combination, like wellness lifestyle brands that were suddenly like following me on Instagram. Was that the ideal is like this new elevated form of restrictive eating.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  That's supposed to like, not only preserve your form as you pass through pregnancy, but also, you know, the implication is that you need to be eating to, to really optimize the life of your future child in a way that goes beyond like avoiding sushi or whatever, you know, you might have been told. And I think just through the repetition of all of this stuff, I was ingesting like an ideal of what a pregnant person was supposed to look like, what, how their fetus was supposed to be growing.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  And it's not that these apps really changed my like physical behavior so much, but they changed my point of view. And what they really did was get me used to this idea of an outside authority, like monitoring my pregnancy and my body and, you know, seemingly reflecting it back to me. And acting as if it knew me on a personal level.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  How did that shape your pregnancy? How did that shape your, you know, your relationship to your pregnancy, to your growing fetus? How did, how did that change things for you?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  I mean, I really only understood how it affected me after I was about seven months pregnant.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  When I was seven months pregnant, I had an ultrasound that I thought would be like a very standard routine ultrasound. And instead, I was on the ultrasound table for much longer than I expected to be. And then, when the doctor came in, he told me that he saw something he didn't like. My son was sticking out his tongue on the ultrasound, which I noticed and initially thought was cute, but is apparently unusual to happen, you know, persistently through the ultrasound. And that was really the moment that my relationship with the internet shifted, where, first of

• 9:17Speaker 02

  all, I started, I became even more like sucked in to this power that I had given it to to explain my life to me and explain my pregnancy to me. But also, it was the beginning of understanding that it didn't know anything about my life and it couldn't explain it to me. To me, one of the most, I think, sticky pieces of technology that I used when I was pregnant was my period app, Flow, which then became my pregnancy app when I unlocked pregnancy mode, which is like a very overly gamified term for what it is.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  It served me in this image of, you know, first like a blastocyst and then an embryo and then a fetus that would regenerate like every week with a new form. And then by seven months, like, I had seven months of looking at that. This sounds so ridiculous to say, but it was so true. I, I started to like think on some level that I was like looking at my baby. When I looked at this CGI image that was actually served to like tens of millions of people who were pregnant. And it was really only at that moment, I remember opening Flow the first time after

• 10:41Speaker 02

  that ultrasound and seeing it with this like serene, closed-mouth smile and realizing like, my baby's tongue is sticking out. Like, this isn't a picture of my baby. Like, it's not, this is not him. And...

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Rationally, I understood that, but emotionally, I didn't understand that until that moment.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Takeaway one: even if you consider yourself a savvy consumer of technology, it's important to interrogate your relationship with new interfaces, especially if you're going through a big life change or they involve your health. If you find they're taking up a lot of your time, or all of the above: your period tracker, the pregnancy app that tells you what size fruit or vegetable your fetus is weekly, the newborn feeding and diaper log with customizable widgets, real-time data across multiple devices. These all might offer very helpful, well-intentioned tools and information. And also, they likely have strong financial incentives to keep you coming back day after day, buying in on those parental ideals.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  So before you panic or compare, pause and consider the source of all that data.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  After I understood that this idealized vision of my fetus was not what my child looked like, like I wanted to know what he would look like. I wanted to know what his life would be like. I wanted to know what our relationship would be like. I wanted to know what people would think of him. After that ultrasound, I had this four-week diagnostic period that ended with a diagnosis of Beckwith-Wiedeman syndrome, which is an overgrowth disorder that causes, among other things, like a child's tongue to grow very fast and to have an extra-large-sized tongue. And this is really, it's such a minor thing in the range of human differences, but it

• 12:39Speaker 02

  was enough to really just cast me out of this, of the center of the pregnancy internet. And at first, that felt very rude. I felt like I had created this sort of community in these apps, and now they didn't apply to me anymore, and I wasn't welcome there anymore. But at the same time, it was the beginning of me understanding that, you know... Disability is normal. It's in a range of normal, you know. Um, this idealized version is is not normal. It's like a fantasy and it can be very destructive. Um, and I think what I found when I first, you know, when when I got a diagnosis for my child,

• 13:24Speaker 02

  I was Googling as hard as anyone has ever Googled. Trying to understand like what he would look like. And um, the images that I found and the stories that I found when I Googled it. You know, I found medical information about uh, the various symptoms that BWS can cause. I found experts uh, at various children's hospitals in the United States who I could speak with. Um, but I also found a lot of medical images of kids with BWS where they're photographed for medical purposes. And then, you know, they're published in journals and it gets into Google Images and then I can see them. But they're not like any kind of like loving portrait that anyone, any normal person would like take of their child.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Um, they're, because they're, you know, taken for medical purposes, they're in these like highly sort of like medical environments, like surgical environments, stuff like that. And so that was very alarming too. And then I found, you know, some online discussion of BWS where I saw comments from strangers who, um, you know, some of whom were saying, oh, ah, or oh, poor kid. And some who were saying, I don't think that child should be born. Like, I don't think that that's acceptable. Hmm. Um, and it was only after my son was born that all of those images were replaced with his true image. Hmm. And he's my son and he's a beautiful person.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  And so I was like, oh, of cour- like, he's adorable. And so I went from thinking that he sticking his tongue out on the ultrasound was very cute to thinking that it was really alarming and a medical problem to thinking that it was something that was going to like really stigmatize him and his life to thinking finally when he was born, like it was cute again. And that was a difficult journey for me.

• 15:19Speaker 04

  So takeaway two, consider how and to what extent you want to seek out information online. Knowledge is power. It's true. And also, the internet is bottomless. For parents or parents-to-be, that means unlimited potential, not just for finding resources, but also for building on anxiety. So try to ask yourself before you opt in, what data is truly necessary on your path of pregnancy and parenthood? Whether it's online, at the doctor's office, or even at home. Amanda, would you talk a little bit about the pros and cons of popular tech today? Like the SNU and the Owlet and the Nanit?

• 16:01Speaker 04

  Because this was a big question when my son came along. Can you talk a little bit about when it's worth it to let this technology into your little one's nursery, when you might just be lulling yourself into a false sense of security?

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when I was first pregnant in 2020, I heard about this device called a SNU, which is a robotic bassinet that is supposed to rock your baby to sleep essentially, and emit this whooshing noise that's supposed to sound like, you know, the sounds of the womb, or maybe a rumbling car in the car seat. All of these places where babies are supposed to sleep better than like lying flat on their back. And my husband and I were so taken by the marketing pitch for this. Like, there's no product that I've ever bought faster, I think. Because what they said was that on average, SNU babies sleep one to two hours more than babies who are not put to bed in a SNU.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  And if you've like had a baby, one to two hours is like a lifetime. So we had signed up for this parenting listserv, and we like sourced this secondhand version of it. It was clear to me from the beginning that like it wasn't turning him into a miracle sleeping baby. Like it it was difficult for him to go to sleep in the sno or out. Uh, and I just couldn't let it go, I think, because I had spent money on it. But also, I had bought into this premise that it it makes babies sleep one to two hours more. And so I think I had this fear that if he were not sleeping in the sno, he maybe he would sleep even worse.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  And so what I realized later was this new, like many of these products, you know, offers these like data-driven insights into how many hours your baby's sleeping, when they're going to sleep, when they're waking up. Uh, it like visualizes their sleep and gives you reports and stuff like that. But really, it had stepped between me and my baby and made it really, really difficult to understand what kind of sleeper he was.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Understand like how he would sleep naturally, um, what he really needed. Because from day one, when we got out of the hospital, I had put him in, I had put him there. Um, and I think like a lot of these products promise this kind of like omniscient insight into your baby. Um, but what they also do is make parents reliant on this tech company to tell them like the very basics of like what their baby needs. Um, and I think if I could do it again, I wouldn't buy any tech for my baby until after he was born.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Because it's really difficult, I think, to predict what your family actually wants and needs. Um, I was so nervous about bringing a baby home that I can see now that like buying certain things helped make me feel like I had some control over it. Or that some unseen data compiling force.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I had some control over him that I, you know, that I failed to have.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  And I realize now that like you can only really know your baby by paying attention to your actual baby.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  Takeaway three, there's a lot of great parenting tech out there designed to make life easier and provides you with more peace of mind. But at the end of the day, being a parent and a new parent especially is just tough sometimes. So don't expect high tech gear to solve all your problems or quell all of your anxieties. And in fact, over reliance on glitchy, imperfect technology can have the opposite effect. So before you invest in that smart sock or ultra HD baby monitor, make sure you understand the needs of your kid and your family to be sure that your tech is truly serving you. And that same wisdom applies to parenting and social media.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  I mean, I think one of the reasons I wrote this book is because becoming a parent is an incredibly profound time and raising a person is a very profound thing. And I felt this intense need to understand it and to narrate it and to share my life with other people. And I think we've always done that. And social media is just such an imperfect tool for doing that. And increasingly, like it feels like one of the only ones we have access to. I thought I was going to make this big decision about whether to put my son's image on Instagram. And then after he was born, I had this like compulsion to do it and I didn't even really think about it. And I've since reassessed that.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  And what I've come to understand is like, I had trained myself over years of Instagram use to photograph new things, photograph beautiful things, like photograph moments of joy and put them online. And when I was in this newborn phase, especially because this was 2020 and so I was like locked up in my house, that was my baby. Like my baby was the thing that represented all of those things. And so of course I was going to post it. And I think at the time, It felt like an expression of love, and I think it is that. But I also think that it was just training.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  I think it was just training from this app of like what I should be putting out there. Even though I had just gone through this experience during my pregnancy of really confronting the idealized nature of like new parenthood and really be becoming disillusioned by it. I was then like, just like obsessed with posting him in a way that like did not acknowledge all of the really difficult stuff that we were dealing with, especially the the medical stuff we were dealing with.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Because I didn't want to, at that time, disclose his diagnosis and to like create this embodied image of him that was like wedded to his medical data in that way. And so it meant that I was then creating this idealized image of my own son that really downplayed his his difference, that didn't acknowledge his disability. And there are like good reasons to keep that private, but I don't know if there were necessarily good reasons to keep posting his picture all the time.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  Takeaway four. Participation in parent media, that desire to show off your kid or prove your love of them to the world can feel reflexive. But like so much other technology in our lives, it's likely more of a habit built over years and years of use. So it can be undone. If you want to learn more about how and why you might want to do that, we've got a great in-depth episode all about how to navigate sharing. That's parents sharing online.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  What do you hope other parents might take away from your experience? You know, are there any lessons learned or lasting wisdom from writing this book that you'd like people to walk away with?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  It's natural to want to know your kid before they're born, but you can't. I think you should guard your imagination and not just give it up to any, you know, tech company that can capture your attention. And for me, I mean, the best thing I did was have my video monitor break and not have a warranty. So I had to get a new one and instead I got just like one that works like the very oldest baby monitor. It's just an audio monitor so I can hear in my bedroom what's happening in my kid's bedroom in case they are screaming. And what I really learned from that shift was like something that I thought I needed

• 24:19Speaker 02

  or I thought was desirable like was actually unnecessary. And that wanting something, like desiring something, is not the same as that thing actually being good for my family. So when I was like testing out fancy monitors and devices, like I was really drawn to looking at them because like I'm addicted to screens. Like I like looking at screens and if the screen has my favorite people on it, my kids, like I'm gonna be looking at it all the time. But I don't need to be doing that. And in fact, like there's so much that I could be doing were I not doing that.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  And so for me, it's really just drawing a line between something I want and something that's actually good for me. And those are different things.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Amanda Hess, author of Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age. Thank you so much for talking with me.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. This was really fun.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  All right, let's recap. Takeaway one: be cognizant of the personal health data you share on the internet and critical of the pregnancy and parenting information you consume online. Even if you consider yourself a shrewd online consumer, the constant messaging and ad placement on pregnancy tools and parenting websites might be influencing you more than you think. Takeaway two: consider how much data and information is helpful and necessary to you and when it might do more harm than good. Like, did you actually feel better after you spent three hours Googling the potential causes of that small pelvic pain early on in your pregnancy instead of waiting to talk to your doctor about it? Takeaway three: when it comes to parenting tech, make sure the tools you invest in aren't

• 26:07Speaker 04

  creating unnecessary barriers to closeness or growth. That might be easier to do if you wait to buy anything until you understand the specific needs of your child. And takeaway four: in case you need the reminder, you're not required to share your kid online. And in fact, there are a lot of good reasons why you might want to opt out. Technology, internet, they're not going anywhere. But if you can find pockets of your life to make do with less and be present with your kid more, well, where do I sign up?

• 26:39Marielle Segarra?

  That was Life Kit reporter Andy Tagle in conversation with writer Amanda Hess. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to decrease your screen time and another on how to make a budget. You can find those at npr.org/lifekit. And if you love Life Kit and you want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/lifekitnewsletter. Also, if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us, why don't you, at [email protected]. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Gharib. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer.

• 27:22Marielle Segarra?

  Our production team also includes Margaret Sorino and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Neil Rouch, Sina LaFredo, and David Greenberg. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.