conversation
TEXT BY
Youngna Park PORTRAIT BY
Sam Kerr
The technology journalist and mother of three suspects that when it comes to parenting gadgetry, less is more.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY | @DGRAYBARNETT
Daniel Gray-Barnett
Sophie Brickman If it comes right down to it, better to trust your gut than countless online sources and high-tech monitors to understand why your baby is fussing—you know your child better than anyone. In broad strokes, that’s the conclusion tech journalist Sophie Brickman reaches in her book, Baby, Unplugged: One Mother’s Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age, which came out last fall. Brickman remembers that when her husband was starting out as a tech entrepreneur, he was always strapping newfangled devices onto himself and getting happily lost in his biometric data. A food writer at the time, Brickman basically paid no mind. But then she became a parent, and she let him persuade her that the 38
wearable gadget he brought home to monitor their newborn’s heart rate and oxygen levels added an extra layer of safety. So she wrapped it onto baby Ella, and they all went off to sleep. That night, an alarm awoke the couple in a panic. While Ella slept on peacefully, her frantic parents eventually discovered the problem’s source: a disrupted Wi-Fi connection. A realization hit Brickman: Perhaps technology was actually delivering more agitation than peace of mind. Brickman, now a mother of three and a (mostly parenting tech) columnist at the Guardian, is not anti-technology. But as her book title suggests, it’s all about balance—and erring on the side of what inspires your kid’s imagination
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JAN UARY/FEB RUARY 2022
