My daughter was born about 2 months ago. Between diaper changes and tummy time (I had no clue this was a real thing until I had a kid), I’ve had thoughts of how being immersed in digital every day affects the way I parent. It started before she was born: hours of googling ways to make sure my wife and I were doing the right things to prepare for her arrival. Things like what cribs got the best reviews online, how to prevent stretch marks, what we need to pack for the hospital and the list goes on.
And of course, we’ve had to balance all the things we’ve learned online with the wisdom and experience of our parents. Advice from both sets of parents who happened to grow up in Korea in the 50s and have not only a generational but a cultural gap in terms of the kind of advice they give (did you know that if you have a baby in the sweltering summer of Korea, they will refuse to turn the air conditioning on…some superstition about cold air giving you osteoporosis when you’re 80 years old or something.)
So as I reflect on the past couple months, I’ve noticed a few areas that have really shaped the way I parent that has been impacted by the digital life I lead.
Every (Really Every) Moment Captured
Everyone has baby pictures. And some of your parents may have gone a little trigger happy on those cameras and you just have a ton of photos. Well, I bought a DSLR and flash media camcorder to add to our arsenal of memory-capturing equipment. The result? Just over 1,800 photos taking up about 16GB of space. Add to that a couple hours of HD video and I’m glad I went ahead and bought an external hard drive dedicated to baby (hopefully it will last through the first year.) The great thing about all this? A 8GB SD card will run you just about $15 on amazon. And a 500GB external hard drive, about $80. Having to be conservative about capturing memories due to the cost of developing film or the cost of memory is quickly fading (no pun intended.) And keeping one set of grandparents who live on the west coast up to date on baby’s growth is 3 clicks in iPhoto.
Dr. Parent
While in the recovery room after delivery, our nurse came by and asked us if we’d like baby to receive her Hepatitis B vaccine. We asked her if there were any downsides to getting it at the hospital and she said no, so we said it’d be fine to go prepare the shot for later in the day. Just to be curious, I whipped out my iPhone and googled “hepatitis B vaccine risks” and got a barrage of articles connecting the vaccine to a number of neurological disorders. Now I don’t want to be the “anti-vaccine parent” but it did make me pause – so we called our nurse up and asked her if it’d be okay if we waited on the vaccine until a checkup with our pediatrician later. She had no problem with that, and it gave us time to look into it further. Without mobile Internet, we would’ve had no perspective on this other than the opinions of our nurse.
On another more light-hearted note, we’ve found some fun apps on the iPhone that were more fun to try than anything, but I’m sure there are some power users out there. Here are a couple apps that keeps track of feedings and diaper changes:
Cataloging the consistency of your baby’s stool has to be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done on my phone. WebMD Mobile has also been a useful app in accessing funky things a baby does in her first two months.
Baby’s Early Digital Identity
A couple week’s after we found out my wife was pregnant, we secured preferred gmail email addresses (with multiple variations using her first and middle name, depending on what she wants to go by) and a Facebook account. None are active right now, but we’re wondering whether to active her Facebook account and manage it for her in these early years. We post all these photos with her in them but we don’t tag her and what’s the fun in Facebook if you don’t do that. And who do we let become friends with baby? Just our friends? If she starts liking a certain brand of diapers or a stuffed animal, should we try to seek out their fan page or Facebook identity? In all seriousness, we did read up on the debate happening online on the line between transparency vs. privacy. When we post pictures of our children, do we only allow certain friends to view the content, do we open it up to all our friends or to the entire world? What is paranoia and what is unsafe? When do children get to manage their own digital identity? Lots of questions in this new world where we feel compelled to share content (embarrassing photos and embarrassing home videos) that 5 years ago we’d keep much closer to us.
This is a bit further away for my wife and I, but I’m sure there will be a day when a site like digitalparents.org (a site that is dedicated to “making sense of how young people use the web”) will be great reading for us.
So What’s the Verdict?
I think technology has enabled a lot of neat things to be possible as a parent but also introduced us to some of the ills of society that we’d probably rather have been ignorant to, but this is the world we live in. It’s highly connected and inter-related. The reason I can find such great advice and content for parenting in 2009 on babycenter.com is because other parents are transparent about their own experiences. But the same technology that makes that sharing possible strikes fear into other parents about posting details about their adorable baby online. As a first-time parent, I’m going to continue to contribute and share, but cautiously. That’s not to say I’m not going to post a gajillion photos of baby on my Facebook, but I’ll definitely be careful about what all I post and who I accept friend requests from.
Lots of things to get excited about and worry about, but at this point, two months in, I’m just focused on smiling a lot at baby, burping and changing blow-out diapers. And of course, taking lots and lots of pictures.
2 Comments | Trackback | Categories: 1000 Ft. POV | Email This Post
October 20th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Great post, Jeff. Crazy you booked domains already! As conflicted as you might be about the implications of managing her facebook, I’d take comfort in the fact that by her 10th birthday, I’d bet FB will be phased out in favor of a new, better social network. At what age will you encourage her to become active online? The answer to that question + when you personally think FB will be fizzling, might shed some insight into how much you should/shouldnt worry over the permanence of her FB account.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Might consider backing up your back up. I lost the first 3 years of my first-borns life in images when my second born decided to play basketball with the hard drive. Sometimes I really think that second born knew what he was doing.