Health Trackers Are Everywhere. Do Babies Need Them, Too?

Baby Health Tech

• Sapna Maheshwari's family uses the Nanit, a Wi-Fi baby monitor described as "the eye of Sauron," which tracks sleep, movements, wake-ups, and overnight visits through an app.
• Rival products include the Owlet, which tracks a baby's pulse through a sock, and apps that log feedings and diaper changes and market an AI chatbot to parents.
• These products tap into new parents' desire for sleep and their persistent question: "Is this normal?"
• Over time, Nanit shifted from monitoring to giving actual advice, often sold via subscription, raising questions about when to trust instincts versus AI.

Nanit's Ambitions

• CEO argues that 90% of a child's brain develops between ages zero and five, while pediatrician visits average 22 minutes once a year, so daily data can "unlock this black box."
• Nanit raised $50 million last year and imagines parents keeping the camera in kids' rooms until age 10.
• The company says it does not sell data or target ads; the subscription fee is framed as proof that the customer is not the product.

The Skeptics

• Sapna's mother found the constant push notifications stressful and believes the technology feeds an unhealthy obsession with optimizing babies: "Babies are not robots."
• A pediatrician raised the concern that parents may rely on apps instead of tuning into a baby's own cues.
• The technology may appeal to dual-working households with limited parental leave, helping them manage schedules.

Adult Wearables

• About half of Americans use health tracking devices; the wearables market is approaching $100 billion.
• Whoop offers a "recovery score" and a "Whoop age"; Kevin Huang, 37, scored a Whoop age of 44, prompting him to wake at 5 a.m. for cardio, focus on sleep, and clean up his diet — dropping his Whoop age to 35.
• A researcher found that the people optimizing their wellness with wearables are largely those who are already well, though wearables have enabled breakthroughs like detecting early onset Parkinson's.

The Big Question

• The episode closes on whether outsourcing decisions to technology dulls human instincts and intuition, a tension society will grapple with increasingly as AI interprets growing libraries of personal data.