婴儿也需要健康追踪器吗？AI时代下的育儿焦虑与数据崇拜

Rachel Abrams: From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily. More and more people are wearing technology. Fitness bands, smart rings, biometric shirts. These devices help track everything from their heart rate to even the temperature of their skin. The latest frontier, health tech for babies, and it's being supercharged by AI. And so today, my colleague Sapna Majari tells us about her family's experience with all of this health tracking technology, and we discuss whether it's helping us, just adding to our anxieties, or maybe both. It's Wednesday, September 23rd. Okay, so Subnet, as you know, we are here today to talk about not just wearable technology, but all kinds of technology that helps you track health data. And I just want to lay my cards out on the table and say that I don't use any of this stuff. I don't have an Apple Watch. I don't use an Aura ring. I'm very much of the mindset that I don't need to spend $300 on some kind of piece of jewelry that's going to tell me that if I drink, I won't sleep very well. So, do you think by the end of this episode I will realize the error of my ways or will I be more set in them?

Sapna Maheshwari: Hm. Great question. I don't know how you're going to feel, but I can tell you that I never thought I would be using a bunch of this technology or that my family would. And it all kind of crept into my life.

Rachel Abrams: How so?

Sapna Maheshwari: So, I'm a mother of two. And when my first kid was born about four years ago, I was looking for a baby monitor. And at that time as I did my research, everyone kept recommending this monitor called the Nanet.

Rachel Abrams: The Nanet. Okay. And tell us what the Nanet does.

Sapna Maheshwari: So the Nanet is a baby monitor that hooks up to your home Wi-Fi and lives as an app on your phone.

Rachel Abrams: It's kind of like the Eye of Sauron. It's grabbing data from the video footage and and logging.

Sapna Maheshwari: We are the Eye [laughter] of Sauron. Is that really what you want watching your baby? Well, you know, you might you might not think so at first, but it it was pretty amazing. So, you open this app and the app is tracking the baby's movements. It logs when they woke up, when they fell asleep. It can see when their eyes open and close. It's looking at all of these movements and sleep patterns of your baby, and then it's putting it into this digestible format for any parent. So my husband and I would open the app and we would look at the insights tab and we would see, okay, how many times did we visit our baby overnight? How many hours of sleep did she get? How many times did she wake up? And when she woke up, how long was she awake before she put herself back to sleep? And so from this app, you can check on your baby from anywhere, whether you're at home or at the grocery store or maybe even at your office. And one of the things that hooked us on this app was the video camera would make these cute montages of these moments of greeting our daughter in the morning and this this look of joy on her face as we picked her up. And the nanet is just one of many of these baby tech products. There's a really big rival of nanet called the Owlet and that tracks a baby's pulse through a sock.

Rachel Abrams: A sock.

Sapna Maheshwari: Through a sock

Rachel Abrams: like literally in the foot. That's what Oh wow.

Sapna Maheshwari: There's a sensor in the sock. There's an app that tracks feedings and diaper changes and with that information markets an AI chatbot to parents who want to understand their baby's habits. There's monitors that send alerts to parents when their baby's face might be covered in the crib and on and on and across the board. I would say these apps are feeding off parents anxiety, their questions, the sort of persistent is this normal?

Rachel Abrams: Yeah. No, it's so this is so interesting just because I just had dinner with a couple friends of mine and the husband was saying that he couldn't sleep with his newborn because he was so worried that the newborn would stop breathing and he kept checking in the middle of the night and the only thing that allowed him to sleep was it turned out he bought a nanit. It's because he was like, "Okay, I can sleep because this thing will alert me if my kid stops breathing." And and so I I know I can actually sleep because I'll get woken up if there's a problem.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah, definitely. And I think that's the running theme with all of these products is they tap into a new parent's desire for more sleep. Anyone with an infant knows that sleep is sort of this holy grail when you have a an infant in the home. And uh there's a lot of other anxieties that that they promise to sort of solve. And I noticed this really with my second child when we bought another nanet that it had started incorporating more AI into the app where it wasn't just giving me feedback on what happened or or monitoring them, but it was now giving me actual advice. I mean, including, you know, when they should sleep next or, you know, how we should interpret different things that they're doing in their crib. And of course, all of these products are are trying to sell you the advice with a subscription fee a lot of the time. And it started raising these questions for me around, okay, when should we trust our own instincts versus artificial intelligence when it comes to decision-m around our kids' health? And on top of that, how should we think about AI when it comes to our own health? So, as I was marketed all of these different forms of advice on how to watch over my child, I decided I wanted to know more about this company whose products stare at my kids all night. And it turns out it has way bigger ambitions around AI and how to use the data. So, I went to interview the CEO Anushka Selenas at the Nana office in New York.

Anushka Salinas: Well, I yeah, I've loved learning more about what Nana is up to.

Rachel Abrams: And what did you learn? What did she tell you about the company?

Sapna Maheshwari: So Selena sees a lot of potential in the data that Nana is collecting and the insights that they can give parents over time

Anushka Salinas: measured, right? So 90% of a child's brain develops, you know, between the ages of 0 and 5. It's when their brain is most plastic. And yeah, kids are going to the pediatrician basically once a year for a checkup. 22 minutes is the average amount of time that that checkup lasts. And yet children are sort of developing every single day. Obviously, we both know this having two young kids. And so we have this infrastructure and opportunity to unlock this black box that's the first five years of life that exists today.

Sapna Maheshwari: And the message that Nana is pushing is that there is a black box around this stage of a child growing as they develop motor skills as they learn to talk as they engage with the world around them. So why isn't there more information around this? And what they're saying is Nanet can provide that information. We have the measurements every single day of what's happening, right? So the power of that right now the company is focused on sleep and babies, but it wants to expand beyond sleep into a kid's overall health and development and investors see that potential as well. Nanet just raised another $50 million last year and its CEO says that with more data, the company can help parents ultimately make better decisions for their kids.

Anushka Salinas: People have questions every single day, multiple times a day. Is this normal? Should my child be doing this? How do I handle that? Right?

Sapna Maheshwari: Her argument is if you look at modern parenting today, people are googling, they're turning to Reddit, they're now asking chat GPT.

Rachel Abrams: Sure.

Sapna Maheshwari: What she's saying and what Nana is saying is this device is collecting this personalized, really specific data for your child. So whereas if you ask, okay, when is my child going to crawl, the CDC will offer a range for kind of an average child.

Rachel Abrams: The CDC will say like between the age of this and this, your child should be expected to walk. Like very general,

Anushka Salinas: right? If you're going to claude or wherever, they that's the information that they have, right? Is that general information. But what we can tell you is what is right for your child and also what's right for your family, right?

Sapna Maheshwari: So, is there something nanny could do by looking at my baby in the crib to tell me that like crawling is around the corner or like talking maybe around the corner?

Anushka Salinas: Yeah. for her specifically. Definitely. Yeah, that's on the horizon for us.

Sapna Maheshwari: Really?

Anushka Salinas: Yeah.

Sapna Maheshwari: And I think there is a real conviction from the company in that this kind of information will help parents. And Nanet actually thinks that parents will keep nanets in their kids' bedroom to the age of 10.

Anushka Salinas: Wow. But we envision a world where people will have their data from zero to 100. And right now, you know, we really think of that 0 to 10 as kind of the place that we live.

Rachel Abrams: Okay. Keeping cameras in a child's bedroom till they're 10 years old. Maybe some kids are totally fine with it. Maybe some are not and maybe that's not healthy for them. I don't I don't know.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah. I mean it it doesn't really happen so much today. So total experiment. I could see a lot of kids being like, "No, thank you." But the CEO told me that she herself keeps a Nana in her eight-year-old and six-year-old's rooms and that you know based on this interview, "I'm definitely going to think about how we're going to keep this device in in my kids' room for longer."

Rachel Abrams: Her own kid,

Sapna Maheshwari: her own kids. And so so let's see how it goes.

Rachel Abrams: Okay. But what about like privacy issues like irrespective of how the kid feels? Like what is Nanet doing with the data that it's collecting by having a camera in the kids' room?

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah. So this is a really big point because obviously parents are are really careful about what they put around their children.

Rachel Abrams: Understandably.

Sapna Maheshwari: Understandably. And so Nanet says that it does not sell the data to anyone else. It doesn't target ads against it.

Rachel Abrams: Not yet.

Sapna Maheshwari: Not yet. They say that they won't and that the subscription fee that they're charging customers is part of that. Look, we're charging you a subscription fee to keep your data private to offer all of these insights and and information to the user.

Rachel Abrams: What's that phrase they say in technology that when the product is free, you are the product and when you're paying for it, you're not the product. So that sort of makes sense to me what I understand about selling data.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah, that's right. And that's that's what the company would say here. Sabina, after you did this interview, did it make you feel better about having this device or did it just raise more questions for you about what is just about whether you should have this in your own home?

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah, it did help me see some of the benefits and look at, you know, how they're using this information and how it's not all nefarious. But it made me think a lot about my own mom and how my own mother didn't like this. What what were her objections?

Sapna's Mother: Uh many.

Sapna's Mother: When you installed the app [clears throat] on my phone, I was shocked. You know, I am just like horrified. But I guess I have to accept. I have to take the parents instruction.

Sapna Maheshwari: So the first time my mom watched my daughter overnight, I installed the Nana app on her phone.

Sapna's Mother: It started sending me messages. Your baby was tended. you know that time ago the baby moved there you know I said my god this is too much it was stressing me now I'm looking at the monitor and thinking god I have to watch this thing I don't think I liked it I don't know how you guys put up with that because

Sapna Maheshwari: she was shocked by the constant flow of information

Sapna Maheshwari: she didn't understand why she was getting these push notifications from from this app

Sapna's Mother: one day I put it on my phone and my phone battery died I didn't realize the whole night was on. Maybe he was in charge. In the morning I woke up and I said, "Oh my god, what to have happened to baby?" And I woke up and I I was like charged in her into her room. I said, "Oh my god, the baby must be crying or something." The baby was sleeping so nicely, soundly, didn't care about anything. And I said, "Oh, my god, you know, that thing is like giving me heart attacks." But you know, that is not how she used to put my two siblings and me to sleep.

Rachel Abrams: So besides it being jarring and maybe overly stimulating, did your mom have like specific objections to the information that she was getting or the instructions that you were giving her about this technology and how to use it?

Sapna Maheshwari: So my mom's of the camp that this kind of information gave us a sense that we could control a baby's environment to to really optimize the sleep.

Rachel Abrams: What does that mean a little bit? Optimize the sleep.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah. So Nana actually studies the optimal temperature that a baby can sleep at. It's one of the studies they're conducting right now.

Rachel Abrams: What is the optimal temperature for a baby?

Sapna Maheshwari: Well, they believe it's between 68 and 72°, but they're finding out for sure.

Sapna Maheshwari: Okay. But it's also kind of lore in the the parenting world. I I think you would probably find a lot of different sources that tell you that the temperature has to be between 68 and 72°. And to my mom, this is a completely crazy behavior.

Sapna's Mother: Who does sleep with the room temperature? That's it is shocking. 68°. Oh my god. You must be kidding. Baby can sleep in any kind of temperature. Even I have seen in India growing up 120° 110° the kids are sleeping

Sapna Maheshwari: 120° mom [laughter]

Sapna's Mother: at least 100° you know easy a baby slept just fine so I think your mind has been conditioned by these monitors what the temperature should be so this is where you know uh this technology is teaching you there certain things should be in a certain ways but I don't believe in that

Sapna Maheshwari: she really believes that babies can sleep in all kinds of environments and that you're bringing a baby into your lifestyle and they will adjust and that is just how parenting is. And my mom thinks this kind of information feeds this unhealthy obsession among modern-day working parents. Now oh my god, you cannot make any sound, you have to tiptoe around them, you don't want to touch them once you drop them in the crib that's it

Sapna Maheshwari: it's all tied to these really strict schedules for our kids and she's of the view that you can't optimize a baby you can't optimize a little human being

Rachel Abrams: as much as adults may be trying to optim optimize every facet of our diets and exercise and this and that. It's a baby.

Sapna's Mother: Babies are not robots. You still need to go with the, you know, um, your instinct, baby cue and a bit relaxed [clears throat] about the whole thing.

Sapna Maheshwari: I think she just sees all of this as an unnecessary layer for what is perhaps the most universal of human experiences,

Rachel Abrams: raising a child.

Sapna Maheshwari: Raising a child.

Rachel Abrams: Stephanie, you mentioned work and the idea that this technology helps working parents. And I do want to point out that I don't know how old your mother is, but there are a lot more women in the workforce now than a generation ago. And we know that parenting disproportionately falls to women very often. And so I wonder how much of this technology is an attempt to help women specifically or working parents generally cope with all of the pressures that have changed for working parents today? It allows working parents to sleep better at night instead of perhaps just the dad.

Sapna Maheshwari: Right. And and I think this is something that came up a lot in my reporting around this story is this idea of what what does this tell us about the condition of modern-day parents, especially in this country? We are more distracted than ever. We're on our phones constantly. We don't have traditional village support around us. Many of us are working full-time jobs. And so when a technology says, "Hey, I can watch your baby while you answer emails, or I can tell you exactly when to put your baby down so you don't have to guess," that feels like a lifeline. But at the same time, it raises the question: Are we outsourcing things that used to be guided by community and instinct to technology and chat bots? And where does that go from here?

Rachel Abrams: And of course, you know, we've been talking about babies, but this type of data collection, sleep tracking, biometrics is something that millions of adults are also doing for themselves to try to optimize their own lives and make better decisions we can make about our health and our bodies.

Rachel Abrams: We'll be right back. Okay, Sepus. So, so far we've only been talking about tracking and analyzing data for babies. But like we said at the top of the show, adults are also obsessed with this stuff. And when you look at the scale of adult health tracking right now, I wonder if you have a way of quantifying it in some way.

Sapna Maheshwari: Well, let me tell you, basically half of Americans have one of these things that are tracking our ou things that are tracking our our health in some sort of way.

Rachel Abrams: God, half of Americans.

Sapna Maheshwari: That's right. Do you remember the Fitbit?

Rachel Abrams: I do remember the Fitbit. That was the thing that told you to take 10,000 steps a day, right? Like people bought Fitbits and now everybody was talking about their steps.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes. So that has given way to a different world where now people are wearing smartwatches, but they're also wearing specialized devices like a Whoop or an Aura Ring, and they're using them not just to track activity but to get this AI fueled advice on what they should do.

Rachel Abrams: Can you just give me an example of that? Like what are the actual functions on a Whoop or an Aura Ring that make them so complicated or sophisticated that people might actually want?

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah, so I mean it's it's tracking your sleep and actually funnily enough it gives you a sleep score and with Whoop it gives you a recovery score every morning and it comes in three different colors. Red, yellow, and green. And they say it's based on a bunch of metrics. Stress, if you're feeling sick, how poorly you ate or drank the night before, your heart rate variability. And they tell you how ready your body is to take on the day.

Rachel Abrams: Wow.

Sapna Maheshwari: And just to be clear, you know, these are consumer products, not medical devices. So, this is a sort of wellness optimization. But Rachel, this is the lites perspective. [laughter]

Rachel Abrams: Okay, so I mean to be fair, I don't own one of these devices. Okay, I wear an Apple Watch. I use it more for the timer. I use it kind of to keep a loose eye on, you know, my activity. But my husband wears a Whoop. And what fascinates me is that I could tell him this or that for years, but now that Whoop tells him,

Rachel Abrams: he actually listens.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes, he does.

Rachel Abrams: Oh my god. Wait, so what's that dynamic? Why is he listening to Whoop? What is it telling him?

Sapna Maheshwari: So I wanted to talk to my husband for this episode, but he refused. So I did the next best thing and I decided to interview the friend who got him into the Whoop.

Sapna Maheshwari: You are are kind of whoop patient zero in our household.

Kevin Hang / Rachel Abrams: That is um flattering, I guess you could say. Okay, tell us about the friend.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes, I

Sapna Maheshwari: So, our friend Kevin Hang is a trader for a hedge fund and so probably more than most people, he's obsessed with data.

Kevin Hang: It felt like something that would jive with my own personality, kind of gifying your health in a way.

Sapna Maheshwari: Last fall, he got a Whoop after a bunch of his friends were talking up all of these metrics that the Whoop collects. It feels like whenever you talk to someone who also has a Whoop, that's the single commonality of, oh, well, how old are you and how old does your Whoop think you are? And one of the things that got him hooked right away on this thing was something called the Whoop age.

Rachel Abrams / Sapna Maheshwari: Okay, what is a Whoop age? So, it's this number that is such a good marketing gimmick for this device. It's based on a bunch of things. It's based on your sleep performance. performance is such a absurd word to use, but it is a common word now for this. Um, it's based on your resting heart rate, the amount of activity you engage in every day. And Kevin, who is 37 at the time, did not score so hot. What did he score? How old was his Whoop age?

Kevin Hang: My first Whoop age was actually 44, which was a bit of a shocking number.

Sapna Maheshwari: Said he was 44.

Rachel Abrams: Oh no, that's so much older.

Rachel Abrams: I don't think it's fair to put someone in a whole different decade without their permission.

Rachel Abrams: No. Why did he respond?

Sapna Maheshwari: It was a wakeup call for him and he made some pretty big lifestyle changes as a result way. And so I started waking up regularly at about 5:00 a.m. on work days to go to the gym to do 45 minutes of cardio every day. He started waking up an hour earlier than usual to exercise before work.

Kevin Hang: Kind of seeing on a day-to-day basis what your recovery is, what your sleep score is. It's kind of like a daily report card of your health and wellbeing and you know very motivating in that way.

Sapna Maheshwari: He was really focused on his sleep and recovery and he's watching his diet.

Kevin Hang: So if I eat clean and healthy then you know the recovery score usually is a lot better whereas if I'm eating you know a lot of fried food and a lot of high sodium food the recovery score will be lower.

Rachel Abrams: And what is his whoop age?

Sapna Maheshwari: Well about a year later his whoop age is now 35.

Rachel Abrams: Congratulations Kevin. you're back in your 30s. [laughter]

Rachel Abrams: So, okay. So, if he went from a 44 year old whoop age to 35, that's pretty impressive if we are to believe that the whoop age actually means something,

Sapna Maheshwari: right? Which is a significant caveat here. But, you know, he does feel healthier and he's doing this because he allowed the Whoop age to actually influence his behavior. Yeah, that's right. And I think that's similar to some of what the Nanet CEO was pushing around the power of personalized data and why advice, when it is tailored to you, makes a difference in why this advice might feel more powerful.

Rachel Abrams: That actually makes a lot of sense when you think about the fact that like just as an example, people have known for decades that they shouldn't smoke or that people should eat more fruits and vegetables. But when an app tells you specifically that eating that late-night burger tanked your sleep, it changes things.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah, I think that's right. And it was seeing Kevin change his habits and talk about the Whoop and how it worked that convinced my own husband to join the sort of the cult around this product.

Rachel Abrams: You're kind of answering my question here. How do you feel about him joining the cult? Like does he incessantly talk about his own Whoop age now?

Sapna Maheshwari: Well, I think the weirdest thing is that Whoop has really entered the chat of our relationship. If we go out on a date night or have a couple drinks, now the next morning instead of just asking, "How are you feeling?", I'm looking at his Whoop and I'm like, "Oh my god, his score is not very good."

Rachel Abrams: [laughter]

Rachel Abrams: Now you're worrying about his Whoop score. This sounds like such a bummer. It sounds like such a buzzkill.

Sapna Maheshwari: I mean, well, it adds this like layer of reality to, okay, oh my gosh, like we we didn't sleep great... But on the flip side, when you get a great night of sleep or you eat very well or you've had some great habits, the Whoop's positive feedback feels like a reward, a blessing, if you will. And I think that's what they're going for.

Rachel Abrams: It sounds like Whoop is basically just wagging its finger at you.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah, but with really tailored metrics and data.

Rachel Abrams: Oh, great. [laughter] How fun. You know, I can't help but notice though, SNA, that these two stories, both the story of the baby monitor Nanet and the story of the adult tracker Whoop, both raise this fundamental question of, you know, what's the point? Like, do we need any of this? Should we brick our phones and unplug and do this less?

Sapna Maheshwari: And I think it's a tension that, you know, exists in our society at large. And I'm really curious to look at this more deeply... there was a doctor that I spoke with who said something that really stuck with me, which was, "The only people that are tracking their wellness are those that are already well."

Rachel Abrams: which made me laugh because it did make me think about a lot of the people in my own life who are using these devices. They're already hyper-focused on this stuff. And for the rest of us, it's just adding anxiety or just like making us less of what makes us people.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yeah, I think that's the big question here. And I feel a lot of concern around that. I mean, is technology dulling our instincts? our senses really and and that's why I was so interested in this subject around babies and baby monitors because to me becoming a parent felt universal like I was engaging in something ancient something humans have been doing literally since the beginning of humans and here I was being presented with all of these new tools in which to do this thing that people have been doing forever and you know what did that mean for for me for people like me for generations around us. I think all of this technology raises the question, are we giving up something meaningful, something super human, something very us when we engage with it, when we turn to it, when we outsource decisions to it? And I see with the growth of these technologies, with the ambitions of these companies, these are questions that we will all be grappling with increasingly in the future. Sapna Mashwari, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

Rachel Abrams: You can read more from Sapna Mahwari and all of our business reporters on the New York Times app. If you don't already have the app, we wanted to let you know that if you download it right now, you'll get access to all of our journalism free for one month. So, give it a try. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. President Trump told the UN General Assembly in New York that he had a decision to make on Iran to strike a deal with Tran or quote annihilate the Islamic Republic.

Donald Trump: Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?

Rachel Abrams: His threat amid a defense of the war he launched alongside Israel in February came as allies have begun to openly question whether the United States remains a credible partner. And the Trump administration has ejected more than 750,000 people from the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplaces. Vice President JD Vance announced on Tuesday, claiming that many were receiving premium subsidies they did not qualify for and that some people were not even real.

JD Vance: We're actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them. Amazingly, we weren't doing that before. Now,

Rachel Abrams: the move is Vance's latest attempt to rein in what he sees as fraud in the federal healthare system. Today's episode was produced by Diana Wyn and Alex Stern with help from Ricky Netski and edited by Lisa Chow. It contains music by Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemisto, and Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Wonderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.