Health Trackers Are Everywhere. Do Babies Need Them, Too?
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What new health‑tech frontier is being explored for babies?
I'm John Caramonica, a critic at The New York Times. And I'm Joe Cascarelli, a culture reporter at The Times. Together we host PopCast, a weekly pop culture chat show where we speak to the biggest musicians, actors, internet celebrities, and more. We've had Bad Bunny, Olivia Rodrigo, and Anne Hathaway. We've also hosted live performances with Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu. Plus, we end every conversation with a snack. Catch new episodes of PopCast every week on YouTube. And anywhere you get your podcasts.
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 Maheshwari 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 Sapna, 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 Oura 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 sedentary?
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.
How so?
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 Nanit. The Nanit.
Okay.
And tell us what the Nanit
does.
So the nana is a baby monitor that hooks up to your home Wi-Fi and lives as an app on your phone. It's kind of like the eye of Sauron. It's grabbing data from the video footage and logging.
The webs for
the eye 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 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, OK, 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 look of joy on her face as we picked her up. And the Nanit is just one of many of these baby tech products. There's a really big rival of Nanit called the Owlet, and that tracks a baby's pulse through a sock. Okay. A sock. Like literally in the foot. Yes.
How does the Nanit baby monitor work and what data does it collect?
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?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What new health‑tech frontier is being explored for babies?
0:00–3:49
2
How does the Nanit baby monitor work and what data does it collect?
3:49–9:17
3
Why do parents feel anxious about constant baby‑monitor alerts?
9:17–14:29
4
How is AI being used to give personalized sleep and health advice for infants?
14:29–20:45
5
What does the adult wearable market look like and how big is it?
20:45–24:15
6
How does the Whoop “whoop‑age” metric influence users’ habits?
24:15–29:43
7
What are the privacy and ethical concerns around baby‑monitor data?
29:43–36:27