THE PARENTS WHO DIGITIZE THEIR BABIES

Socks that record heart rate and cots that mimic the womb might promise parents peace of mind — but are the data given to tech firms a fair exchange?

SOURCE - the Taipei Times - find the full article here.
PDF file of vocabulary and questions to be used with this article here.

LEVEL - advanced

VOCABULARY (PAGE 1)

• womb
• mimic
• peace of mind
• disconcerted
• hypnotised
• fragile
• compulsion
• colour spectrum
• cocooned
• substantially
• mediated by
• play around with sth
• little one
• scent
• emit
• nappy
• quantify
• conception
• fertility/fertile
• follow a cue
• have a revelation
• drastically
• wearables
• vie for space

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS (PAGE 1)

1. Why does the writer seem to think that young children’s interactions with technology are a little strange?
2. Who is Jenny?
3. How has Jenny’s mother been tracking her data?
4. What kinds of data is the Feed Baby app able to keep a record of?
5. What can you do with the information once it has been recorded?
6. What does it mean that babies can now be tracked from conception? How is this possible?
7. What is Baby Show? What can you find there?
8. When did the exhibits on show there start to become more digital?
9. What have these new digital products replaced?

VOCABULARY (PAGE 2)

• oxygen saturation
• become a theme in/for
• spectrum
• replicate
• lull into
• truism
• mortality rate
• plummet
• precarious
• rust belt
• rash
• omnipresence
• mundane
• geolocation
• anonymous

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS (PAGE 2)

1. What is Bluebell? Who made it and why?
2. How does Owlet differ from Bluebell?
3. Why has Owlet’s popularity increased?
4. Where is all the money for new technology in this area coming from?
5. It is a truism that anxious people make good consumers. Why is this?
6. What other truisms can you think of?
7. How does Kurt Workman compare becoming a parent to getting a driving license?
8. How has parenthood changed in the past 100 years?
9. What parental fears are digital media helping to comfort?
10. What happens to the data collected by the Owlet sock?

VOCABULARY (PAGE 3)

• algorithm
• automated
• intuition
• newborn
• worthwhile trade-off
• gamify
• tendency
• hours logged
• categorically
• do sth. For its own sake
• devise
• wriggle
• quell
• choking fit
• situational anxiety
• ambient anxiety
• postpartum/postnatal
• proximity
• cognizant
• tethered
• embedded in
• qualms
• implacable

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS (PAGE 3)

1. What are some are some of the positive applications of the Owlet data?
2. Why might it be able to help save money?
3. Why doesn’t Mary Wahl use Owlet? What else does she use?
4. Why does she rely on an apps and YouTube more than on her friends and family?
5. Why isn’t she worried about companies collecting her child’s data?
6. How do apps gamify parenting?
7. How did Owlet change the way parents interact with their children?
8. What were the positive and negative effects seen in the study of families using Owlet?
9. What do we have to give up in order to have a sense of control?

VOCABULARY (PAGE )

• eczema
• catch my drift
• pedometer
• unsubstantiated
• discrepancy
• compelled to
• sick to my stomach
• go cold turkey
• whip out your phone
• resolve to do sth.

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS (PAGE 4)

1. Why will parents still buy this kind of technology even if they are worried about recording so much data?
2. What prompted Romi Matthews to develop Bluebell?
3. What problems did he encounter while using the traditional baby monitors?
4. How is Bluebell different to other devices currently on the market?
5. How does he think that the data can help parents?
6. What things started to make Aoife question her use of digital tracking?
7. How is her parenting style different to the way it used to be?

EXTRA QUESTIONS

A good source can be found here.

• What kinds of things do you, your friends and family members track?
• Do you know where the information goes? Do you care?
• It is unlikely that we will stop tracking this kind of information, what do you think we will be using this information for in the future?
• If you had a child, how positive would you feel about the technologies mentioned in the article?