Baby, Unplugged: One Mother’s Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age
About this ebook
There’s an app or device for nearly every aspect of parenting today: monitoring your baby; entertaining or educating your toddler; connecting with other new parents for tips, tricks, and community—virtually every aspect of daily life. But it isn’t a parenting paradise; the truth is much more complicated.
The mother of two young daughters, journalist Sophie Brickman wondered what living in a tech-saturated world was doing to her and her children. She turned to experts, academics, doctors, and innovators for advice and insight. Baby, Unplugged brings together Brickman’s in-depth research with her own candid (sometimes hilarious) personal experience to help parents sort through the wide and often confusing tech offerings available today and to sort out what’s helpful and what’s not.
Filled with relatable and entertaining stories as well as practical takeaways, Baby, Unplugged is destined to become a touchstone for parents today, giving them the permission to forge their own path through the morass of technological options, to restore their faith in themselves, and to help them raise good, social, and engaged people in the modern world.
This blend of investigative journalism and laugh-out-loud memoir provides a much-needed roadmap for modern parenthood, with answers to the tough questions, including:
- The Quantified Child: Are baby monitors, smart socks, and data-tracking apps a source of reassurance or a driver of parental anxiety? Brickman investigates when data is helpful and when it gets in the way.
- A Digital Village: From massive Facebook groups to mom-matching apps, this book explores whether online communities can ever replace the real-life support new parents desperately need.
- Smart Toys, Smarter Kids?: A deep dive into the world of “enriching” electronic toys and educational apps, sorting the genuinely beneficial from the high-tech junk.
- Trusting Your Gut: Learn how to cut through the noise of conflicting advice and endless options to restore faith in your own judgment as a parent in a tech-filled world.
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About the author
Sophie Brickman is a writer, reporter, and editor who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Elle, Saveur, The Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, and other outlets. Her work has also appeared in the Best Food Writing and the Best American Science Writing anthologies. She is the author of Baby, Unplugged and Plays Well with Others. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.
