428: Is Tech Helping You as a Mom… or Quietly Controlling You? with Amanda Hess

How do our phones, apps, and digital tools quietly shap our experience of motherhood. We're joined by Amanda Hess, writer at large for The New York Times and author of Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age. Amanda shares how pregnancy apps, tracking tools, and hyper-targeted ads didn’t just “support” her— they started defining what kind of mom she thought she was supposed to be. From fertility tracking and bump apps to baby monitors, sleep trackers, and Life360-style teen surveillance, we unpack the subtle ways tech feeds anxiety, perfectionism, and the pressure to “optimize” everything… including our kids. In this episode, you’ll hear: How one pregnancy app quietly shifted Amanda from “this is helpful” to “this is telling me who my baby should be”—and why that mattered when her son’s diagnosis didn’t match the glossy digital version. What happens when your phone knows your pregnancy before your friends do, and how targeted ads start shaping your identity as a mom before your baby is even born. The hidden emotional cost of baby and teen surveillance tech (like smart socks and location tracking apps) and why they create more anxiety than actual safety. Simple mindset shifts to reclaim your intuition in a tech-saturated world, so your phone becomes a tool—not the authority on your parenting. Resources We SharedGrab Amanda's book Second Life: Having A Child In The Digital Age: hFollow Amanda on InstagramGrab our FREE Stop Doing Checklist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices