Evaluating Parenting Technology with Sophie Brickman, Author of "Baby, Unplugged"

Alexander Sarlin  0:04 
Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies. Sophie Brickman is the author of the new book, "Baby Unplugged: One Mother's Search for Balance, Reason and Sanity in the Digital Age", all about how parents can try to navigate the complex world of technology. Sophie Brickman is a writer, reporter and editor based in New York City. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Best Food Writing compilation and The Best American Science Writing compilation. Sophie Brickmanq Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

Sophie Brickman  1:02 
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Alexander Sarlin  1:03 
So Sophie, you're a journalist and reporter who's written about everything from food to influential women, to science, you have an interesting cuisine background or cooking background, what first got you interested in the overlap between technology and parenting,

Sophie Brickman  1:20 
Having a child, which tends to appeal your entire worldview and focus like your all of your remaining brain moats on this new person in your life, my husband is a tech guy who lived down in San Francisco for a while. And he worked for a startup and really love technology. And I sort of followed him out there and was reporting on food at the Chronicle. And sort of like keeping an eye on tech out of the corner of my eye. And then when we had our baby, she's turning six and a few days, actually, but it seems like yesterday, we brought her home from the hospital. And my husband, Dave strapped this tracker onto her some sort of newfangled monitor that was supposed to monitor her heart rate or her oxygen intake or like some sort of intensely granular thing. And I had never taken care of a baby before. And I figured like, okay, I guess maybe this will help calm me down. And the thing went off in the middle of the night, this alarm went like was blaring. In our apartment, we were living in a one bedroom. So she was literally next to me, like I could touch her. And I thought something horrible had happened. And I had just lost connection with the Wi Fi. And it was a very crystallizing moment where I thought there's something here where technology is telling me that I will be a calmer and more efficient mother in some way. But what does that mean, as I'm a new mother, and I'm not sure. So I started kind of investigating this. And I wrote a piece for The New York Times about the smart nursery about all of these data heavy and tech heavy gadgets that you could use in the nursery. I've gotten a lot of feedback from parents who similarly we're kind of adrift in this world. And so that kind of sent me off in the path of thinking, There's something here it sort of struck a nerve, and I'm not the only one,

Alexander Sarlin  2:53 
It makes sense. So the book, Baby Unplugged, it's really a fantastic book, "Baby Unplugged: One Mother's Search for Balance, Reason and Sanity in the Digital Age". It's broken up into two sections. And one is about technology options that are available, or maybe, as you say, sort of thrust and marketed to modern parents. And the other is about technology available to children. And you know, on this show, we don't actually talk that much about the technology of parenting. And so I thought it'd be really interesting to start there. So most of the technology that's available could maybe be called sort of like the parenting industrial complex, it gives parents more and more of what they think they need. You just talked about giving more data. Or it could be more advice, or more different kinds of products. Tell our listeners some of what you discovered about this kind of world as you looked into this technology of what parents can choose from right now.

Sophie Brickman  3:47 
Yeah, I mean, the parenting industrial complex is a good way to say it, I should have used that in my book, which I didn't do. But I was born kind of in the dawn of the internet, we had a dial up modem, AOL chat was a thing when I was 10, or 12, or something like that. And so I kind of remember it a time before this, but not really. But the promise of technology and information that the information age is that you can synthesize and sort of like curate the perfect answer if you have enough information. And so that can feel very common for some people. And I did a lot of research reporting with people who really love getting as much information as possible about everything related to their baby. But it can also be very, very overwhelming, which is what I found. And so there's sort of this idea coming out of Silicon Valley that you can hack various moments in parenting, you can get your kid to sleep faster or longer. You can wean them off a pacifier. If you know how many minutes they're sucking on a pacifier this night versus that night. There are charts and data crunching apps that you can look at that really kind of boggle the mind when you see how intense they are. Some people who want to control things. I think it gives them the sense that they're controlling the moment of becoming a parent. I think the bigger question it brings up for me is, is that the end game, when you have a kid is to control them in a certain way? Or is it sort of to relax into what it means to become a parent and to get to know your kid and have those sleepless nights? I mean, I'm not saying that we should have those sleepless nights, but if we don't need to, but I think the promise is very, very sexy, and often serves to make people more anxious, or at least it made me more anxious. So you're talking about kind of that smart sock that I put on the baby that went off that was full of data. There are trackers you can put into diapers, I mean, it becomes like onion level, a headline, you're kind of like, really, this exists, but people are interested in it. And I think they're interested in it, because we're all a little bit frenzied and harried and need support. I think that's like, you know, a question for a different podcast of why parents are not supported in America in various ways, but you want help, you don't have the village that you think that you need, that we all deserve? And so you turn to technology to help. So that's a long answer to the first part of the book of what it's about, which is it covers data gathering, it covers social, social media, and sort of having these virtual villages where you can ask a question to 30,000 other parents and get a crowdsource answer to like, what do I do if my kid is spitting out his pacifier? It's like, I don't know, just, he's spitting his pacifier out, like do you need to get input on all of that stuff? And my biggest takeaway was that like, the way to kind of cut through all of that noise is to find one or two people that can really be your rabbi, be that your mother or your pediatrician or your best girlfriend or something, because it can get very, very overwhelming very quickly, and it can sort of, you can't see the forest for the trees.

Alexander Sarlin  6:42 
I love this point about modern parents not having necessarily a lot of people close to them in their life, not having that village around them, other mothers or other parents or other elders to to support them. And instead turning to the internet, and turning to chat forums and turning to products that tell them they need monitoring, it feels like a lot of new products and technologies are rooted in that fear that parents have of doing something wrong. And you mentioned that you discovered this in relation to your first child. And I think that's probably the biggest moment where he worried about doing something wrong. So how can parents sort of figure out if they're having their first child, which technology they actually need, and which might just be sort of created to play off the fear that they know is there in the market?

Sophie Brickman  7:27 
I mean, I went very deep into various disciplines. Because mind you, I was writing this book, living with a tech evangelist, who was my husband, who had worked in tech, lived in Silicon Valley, started his own company, just like loves technology, and really believes it's great. So I like you know, went off and wrote this book to prove him wrong in various ways. In order to do that, I spoke to a lot of people who are who loved technology, I spoke to entrepreneurs, I spoke to venture capitalists, I also then went deep into what is happening in the brain, neurobiologist, developmental psychologist. And so I really like I approach this as best as I could from being kind of a little bit like Bambi, being like I have this inclination that I think that technology in this way, it can be helpful or harmful, but I'm not sure. Ultimately, what I found out, which I think should calm parents, particularly new parents, who are going embarking on this for the first time is that kids, by and large, don't need very much to thrive once their basic needs are met. So this promise of Silicon Valley and various other marketing promises, which is that you can make your kids smarter, or you can help them succeed faster, or kind of optimize a moment, like put them on this play mat, not that play mat, or give them this developmentally appropriate toy, not that one, or give them this app that can sync with XYZ and not that app. Those promises are from a developmental psychology perspective, certainly under the age of five, pretty bogus. So there's ways to use technology in a smart way, which we can get to because I definitely like my kids watch screenings, and they do all I need to use tech in my house. I'm definitely not like a person who lives off the grid I live on like the Upper West Side of Manhattan. So my kids have technology all over the house. But I think overall, you should know that, you know, boredom is really, really good for young kids, that when they're very, very young, just looking around is huge. They don't need to be looking at specific things or images that are black and white. And like, yes, you can do that. And that can be fun. And if you find benefit and value in it, then great. But I think for me, I kind of knee jerk reflexively just took at face value a lot of the promises of this, and it didn't seem right. But I was like, I'm not gonna stop and think about it. I'm just gonna do it. Somebody bought me a play mat that's supposed to be developmentally appropriate, like I'm gonna shove that kid under that play mat, and they are gonna get into Harvard. And then when you start thinking about it and interviewing people, it's like, well, not really. So I think you know, that should be a voice of calm. If you are not sure what you're doing, like you're doing just fine. The kid is just fine. You can do tell if they need something that you're not giving them, and it certainly is not like an app.

Alexander Sarlin  10:04 
That's, I think, a very reassuring message to new, or expecting parents that--I love, I love your metaphor "if you'd put them on the right plane that they're gonna get into Harvard", it feels like there's this ethos of optimization. It's like, How can I do exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, assuming that you have to do it that way to get your child where they need to go. And I think technology sort of works that way that looks for optima. But with parenting, that's probably not the right framework, you don't have to optimize every moment is what I'm hearing you say?

Sophie Brickman  10:35 
Absolutely. And getting to know your kid, this comes up a lot with screen usage, like you give your kid a screen and they'll shut up like for sure, and they'll be quiet, and they won't have that tantrum until you try to take it away. But in the moment of giving them that screen to absorb them, you know, you are short of short circuiting a moment where the two of you could connect where you could understand, Okay, the reason he's having a tantrum is because of this thing. Like let him work through it. Let him kind of develop the muscle of boredom, or not getting exactly what he wants immediately. So it's a bigger question about what it says about America that we're trying to optimize parenting, like being a parent maybe is not something that should be an optimized and hackable experience of your life.

Alexander Sarlin  11:18 
Yeah, it's a really interesting way to look at it. And I think it goes against in, not in a conflicting way, but it sort of offers a different take on some of these products that are in competition with each other for exactly what they do, and how fast they work and how much data they store. You know, one of the most discussed new technologies for parents are these digital bassinets and cribs that are sort of designed to put babies to sleep with automated rocking and sounds. There's the Snoo, or the mamaRoo, I know you've covered some of this in your book, what is your take on this type of technology?

Sophie Brickman  11:53 
So look, I mean, I have now three children, I have so many children, one of them is only nine and a half months old. So I am like just coming out from under not sleeping for months or maybe years. So I completely empathize with the idea of like, essentially plugging your kid in. And I use some of these devices for research purposes, like quote, unquote, but also like love them because they worked by and large. And I think that they're prohibitively expensive, but that will change. And I think, you know, that's something that listeners should know is that yes, a lot of this stuff cost an enormous amount of money, but sensors and cameras, and all these things that are used in these high tech nursery gadgets are getting ways cheaper and ways smaller. So you know, I spoke to somebody who said all that it's going to be everywhere very, very soon. So in terms of those gadgets, one school of thought is that it's not that much different than just putting a kid from stationary bassinet into something that rocks and if you're rocking it with your foot or with your hand, it's kind of the same thing. And why not just plug it in and have it rock, I think there are two problems with that. One is that most of these smart bassinets are hooked up to your phone. And they spew an enormous amount of data about your child at your phone. And it's all presented as a very much like, take what you want, if you don't want to just turn that off. Like how many people can turn off Instagram? Like how many people can just have that self control? I mean, there's a huge industry that is based on lack of self control when it comes around technology. So I think, sure, that sounds nice, but I don't think in reality, it works for that many people. And secondly, I think it brings up the bigger question of, like I said, sort of what does it mean about society that we want to outsource rocking a baby? I mean, that sort of as a provocative statement, I think it's completely fine. You don't need to be rocking your kids skin to skin 24 hours a day. But I do think that one should think about what it is that you're trying to achieve there. And a lot of really wonderful things neurologically and psychologically happen when you're rocking your kid in the middle of the night. I don't think that that would supersede like if every kid could sleep through the night from the beginning, like, great, that would be fine. And you would still bond with the kid in a different way. But it's sort of just to kind of have people take a breath, and think about what it is that they're losing when they're gaining certain optimized moments of parenting.

Alexander Sarlin  14:10 
Yeah, so I hear a theme in this section about parenting tech, which is that technology may make things easier. It may give you more data, which some parents want or think they want. But what it tends to do is sort of pull away some of the analog, organic Moments of parenting of babies that may be rocking a baby, even if it's painful, and you're sleep deprived, maybe there's something going on in the neurology of the baby or the neurology of the parent or the connection that we don't fully understand and that you may be sort of beginning to tune down by outsourcing it to technology. Would you agree with that?

Sophie Brickman  14:49 
Yes, for sure. But we do fully understand a lot of this, like a lot of wonderful things happen with like smell and with heartbeat and with touch, all of this stuff. You'll see it a lot in [?]. There are wonderful things that happen that are very primal and very animalistic and very out of touch with people who have been raised like me and like you with technology everywhere, where there's sort of a lot of value put into efficiency. Slowing down is really, really, really hard. Kids are born with that in me kind of gifts to just be slow and quiet and creative. And that I think, is at odds a lot with parents who have been raised to consume and to be efficient. And so it's like, you kind of have to recalibrate in a million ways you only one parent, but that's one of them. And so it's sort of understanding that sitting on the floor with your kid, as they gum a block might be the right thing for you to be doing for their benefit. And just even if it's not the best thing for you, right then like, so what, it doesn't matter. I think that's a hard pill to swallow. And I certainly don't swallow it every day. But I try to at least acknowledge that it's there.

Alexander Sarlin  15:56 
I love your point about Instagram and about how technology has that sort of innately, you could call it addictive, or at least compelling quality to it that pulls people in and makes it hard to come out. And we all see that both for ourselves. But also with children. You know, as soon as you put a child in front of a screen or hand them a iPad or a screen device, they start to get really absorbed into it. So I think that's a great segway to move on to the second part of the book, which is about baby tech, the technology designed for children. And especially because this is EdTech Insiders, technology designed to be educational. So you have a great chapter about smart toys. And the idea that should a toy be enhanced with electronics and sensors. Or it doesn't make sense sometimes to have a little bit of more old fashioned toys. And you talk about how experts sometimes advocate open ended creative play, and how maybe digitally enhanced toys aren't always aligned with that. So give our listeners an overview of toy technology and what is going on in smart toys.

Sophie Brickman  16:57 
Sure, I had like a very surreal experience. They went to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, like right before the pandemic happened. And it was my first time going to a show like that. It was like however many hundreds of thousands of square feet and so many people and it was all the cutting edge technology. And there's there's a whole section that was like family and Kid centric. And the stuff that is out there is so wild, it's like there was an octopus that you could hug. And there was a iPad inside it. And it made a space that was like, nice or happy. And then like, there was so much information coming at me and it was kind of appealing and kind of crazy making what I and like you said about like educational stuff, the promise of almost all of these things, there isn't that much marketing that is like this is fun. It's like this is fun and STEAM. This is fun, and STEM, this is going to give your kids all of these different skills from a very, very young age. What I researched, there were many different philosophies of play, and free play. And there was a education philosophy called RIE which stands for resources and infant educators, which is like not really a word. And you're like what is this, and I started reading a little bit more about it. And it became very, like sexy, and Hollywood because Tobey Maguire, and I think Helen Hunt and a few other people kind of subscribed to and then there was a New Yorker article about it. And it can be a little bit touchy feely, but one part of it that I really latched on to was their phrase, which was busy babies passive toys or active babies passive toys. And the idea is that the less that the toy does for the kid, the more the kid has to do for it. And it was a kind of simple catchphrase that I can use to evaluate any number of toys that were in my kids nursery. To be clear, the book focuses on preschool, so kind of a birth to about five, when you're in school, things sort of change with your brain, things change with your everyday life. But for young kids, the simpler, the better. And you'll find this, you'll see kids kind of indicating this to you when you get them a present and you agonize over what the best friend is going to be. And then what they want to play with is the cardboard box that came in, right. And kids are kind of telling us that that's what they want. And that's what they thrive on. And it's an important thing for a bunch of reasons. Stuff that you don't necessarily think about at this age, like gross motor skills, like fine motor skills, like if the kid has to move across the carpet. And the the toy doesn't go across the carpet for you that's like good for their activeness it's good for their brains, fine motor skills, too. And then imagination and creativity. I went to a museum of, I think it's called the Museum of Play, but it's mostly just a lot of toys. And it's a has a history of toys. It's in Rochester, New York. It's a really amazing place. And I spoke to somebody there, the head of it and he said, you know there's the Tickle Me Elmo and then there's just the plush Elmo and the Tickle Me Elmo like laughs for you and moves around. And the plush Elmo you have to make do the laughing by yourself. And that is a very important foundational developmental tenant of childhood development. And so when you think about I spoke to the head out of RIE, or the former head of RIE, she said, everything you need for your little kid is in your kitchen, like not knives, but bowls and water than a cutting board and like just let them play with that kind of stuff. And they will find the meaning in the play themselves, which speaks also to various companies that tell you you need different toys for different stages. It's like, a ball can be a ball in a lot of different ways. A ball can be something to chew on, when you're little, it can be something a roll, it can be something to throw, kids will create the magic in the toy, you don't need to kind of shove it on them.

Alexander Sarlin  20:34 
So it's a really great point. I love that phrase, active children passive play, I think it really puts a fine point on something that we don't often think about, which is the the sort of generational gap. You know, I think that parents, for the most part didn't have a lot of super electronically enhanced toys, certainly nothing with smart sensors, or AI or anything that is modern in their toys. They had to sort of bring that imagination to it and make Elmo laugh and make the toy soldiers talk and fight and make the dolls talk and fight and the Barbies and everything. And it's really interesting to hear that idea that as you enhance toys and make them smarter, make them do more, arguably, you're sort of taking some of the imagination and the autonomy and away from the kid because that Elmo is always gonna laugh. They're never gonna cry when you tickle them. But maybe that would be more interesting.

Sophie Brickman  21:27 
For sure. And I mean, like, again, I would underscoretwo points. This is like for kids that are quite young, which is all that was relevant to me because I you know, as a young mother, all I knew was like up to age four, and then up to age five, and then the book was published. So now it's like a whole new world and my kids and kindergarten. I would also say that, like, on the flip side of this, there's a real kind of false idea of nostalgia, where you're like, Oh, if only we were raising kids, when our parents were raising that there weren't iPads, like there was no, like, since the dawn of time, any new technology, even if that was the novel was considered to be questionable, and maybe really, really bad for kids, Madame Bovary and like you can go back and every generation has some sort of like hysteria around whatever technology there is. So I think the work is to figure out how to use it in your life in a way that doesn't make you crazy, and to not become sort of slavish to any sort of headlines. There are so many of them now.

Alexander Sarlin  22:23 
Yeah, you mentioned having toys for each developmental stage. And you know, one other type of ad tech company that is sort of out now are these subscription toy services like Lovevery or Monti kids, which is Montessori based one or KiwiCo, which basically offer more hands-on toys, things that are less electronically enhanced, but they're often backed by Montessori principles. And that promise is you order online, so there's technology there, but then the toys that come are very analog, and they're supposed to be perfect for the child stage of development. So what do you think of that this combination of sort of technical delivery, but a very analog products that maybe try to get to that active child passive play mentality.

Sophie Brickman  23:06 
I mean, I think some of this stuff can be great. I interviewed a couple founders of similar companies, and the stuff they're doing, it's very, very thoughtful. And it's grounded in developmental psychology. And it is very analog. And a lot of this stuff, I mean, I don't know which specifically, but some of the toys that come are very beautiful and wooden, and they feel nice. And that's all great. And I think that like using technology as ease of getting it to people's hands is great. I will also say that coming off of 2+ years of the pandemic were in fits and starts we were like isolating in our apartment, it was really wonderful to have a, you know, kit and come that was like, This is how you make a air hockey table. That was fun. And it took kind of the anxiety away from me and my husband who like are mad crafty at all, I think the issue you can run into with some of these is what I said before, which is kind of teaching parents that they need a specific type of activity for a specific age. And again, this changes when the kids get older, like for sure a nine year old will be doing something different than a five year old, but very, very young kids, like what you want is for them to just be playing with sort of what's around like for sure anybody listening to this podcast has everything they need to entertain the kid up to the age of like, three, for sure. You have like some markers or a pen. You have some pencil, you have some balls, you have some bowls in the kitchen, you have like the bathtub. So I think that as a base level, that's kind of should be your odometer, but I think sure using technology, I mean you're on your phones, I wrote a whole chapter about e-commerce and sort of how seductive it can be but also how my life would fall apart without it because diapers wouldn't arrive. And so the question is where to use the efficiency of tech to help you and were to kind of slow down a little bit.

Alexander Sarlin  24:52 
That's a fair point. I like that distinction between where can tech make things easier and where does the making things easier actually pull you out of the moment, where is it actually easier in a positive way? And where is it easier in a way that maybe has some unintended consequences in terms of taking away some of the presence or the slowness or the just sort of zen, you know, connection that parents and children have when there isn't a technology in the way? So we've talked about a smart bassinet. We've talked about smart toys. We've talked about subscription toy services, you just mentioned sort of e-commerce. I think, you know, the last section of the book is probably the most known to our audience, because they think about EdTech, often delivered through applications and on phones or through devices. And it's basically all the technology delivered by screen. E-books, you have a whole great chapter about e-books. After all your research, let's talk about screens. What did you learn about different kinds of technology delivered by screen? Are there guidelines that you would offer parents about how to identify which screen experiences are better than others?

Sophie Brickman  26:01 
Sure. And I have like sort of the quippy answer, and then kind of I can go a little bit deeper the quippy answer is, I was surprised to learn that it is less what you're watching on the screen and sort of how you're watching it. And by that, I mean, when you start getting into the weeds, I talked to people at Sesame Street, which is very lauded as being a very thoughtful preschool programming developer, I spoke to people at Toca Boca, which is a very loaded app developer, trying to figure out what makes a good app, what makes a good show. And a lot of them said, you want to use the screen the way that you would use a toy or a book or other things, you want to use it as a piece of medium that you can connect over. So if you are able to, it's built into a book, a baby can't read a book to itself. So like you have to interact and engage and have shared engagement with a book. But you don't have to have shared engagement with an app, kids are drawn into debating buttons to kind of no matter what age they are. So if you can put on a program that you guys can talk about that you can sort of it's called extending learning. So anything, that's why even the head of, of curriculum development, I know her specific title at Sesame Street was like, we make really great stuff, watch with your kid. Because if you watch with your kid, then you can talk about the things that were going on in the screen, you can say that that's an apple over here, and like, here's an apple on the fridge, you can make connections that they might not be able to make on their own. And so that's kind of one large point to make, which is that if you can stand to watch the thing and talk about it, like, that's probably better for everybody. The other thing is that when developers try to get kids very sucked into a screen, they will use a lot of cuts, quick cuts in it, it's called the orienting response. And so you pick up again, and again and again, and again and again. And so what you see as a parent is your kid is watching the screen, but what's going on in their brain is just like "Beeeeeeh!", so thus fewer cuts, the better. And Mr. Rogers is consistently ranked like the best show ever, or one of them by all these developmental psychologist. And if you actually take the time to watch it, it is unbelievably slow, like I am talking at 2x speed of what Fred Rogers speaks, he's very slow, and he takes his cardigan off real slow. And it's one camera. And it takes a long time for him to get down the stairs and pick up his instrument and sing his song. And it's very comforting, and it's very quiet. And it means that kids can transition from watching the screen to doing whatever else is going on in the real world, which is very important. So if you want to kind of get mathematical about it, and I did this for the purposes of the book, like tape something or watch something and figure out how many cuts there are on any given minute. And you will see that a lot of modern shows are incredibly fast paced, and constantly exploiting this orienting response. And a lot of older shows are much, much quieter. So that's kind of one way to make a good evaluation. And the other thing is like, figure out what your values are in your household, which is something that's very hard to do. And I still don't really know what they are. But we liked watching the Muppets and the like Mahna Mahna skit, we probably watched that a million times me and my kindergartner like was that enriching? Like no, but it was funny. And we liked it. And we laughed over it. And I think that's sort of a shared experience that's important to have. So screen usage can also be kind of evaluated on that metric.

Alexander Sarlin  29:21 
Those are terrific guidelines. So I'm hearing shared experience, engage with children while they're watching YouTube videos or apps or ebooks so that it's not just them in the app, it's them, and the app or ebook or video and a parent or and sibling and the tech becomes a means of connecting rather than just a hole that the child is in alone. That feels like it makes a lot of sense. I know I'm probably putting some extra words in your mouth.

Sophie Brickman  29:50 
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And sort of one other thing that was surprising to me is when I went into researching apps and researching programming, I just kind of assumed that programming whether that be watching a TV screen or watching something on your iPad or your phone was passive. And apps were very active. And so apps were better than because like you require your toddler to be doing something. But in fact, on this way of evaluating it, it's much harder to be involved in an app or an iPad or a phone because it's simply smaller, like co-engagement is nearly impossible. At least in my household. It's like a lot of elbows come out when I tried to look at what's going on in the iPad. The bigger screen, frankly, I mean, it sounds simple, but it's easier for you to kind of keep tabs on what's going on when the screen is bigger.

Alexander Sarlin  30:33 
That's a great guideline as well. I want to actually double click on the Toca Boca example, you name Toca Boca is a super juggernaut EdTech company. It's a Nordic company that basically at any given time, 8 of the top 10 apps for children usually come from Toca Boca and I know you really went to Toca Boca, you talk to the developers there, I'd love to hear how they think about trying to make experiences as active and educational and open as possible and whether you think they sort of achieve that.

Sophie Brickman  31:02 
So I spoke to Emil, who's the head of Toca Boca, but I actually went and visited in Toronto, they had bought a a younger app company called Sago Mini, which is specifically for younger kids, so that's where I spent time. And they're very, very big on open-ended play. And when I spoke to Emil, he was like, I grew up in Scandinavia running around in the forest. And like, that's kind of what I want to try to, to emulate on the screen. I grew up with, like Legos that didn't have a purpose, you just kind of made what you made. And I want to try to emulate that on the screen. And so what they did, I had a lot of fun there because I sat down with these developers who were used to like developing for super intense, like, shoot 'em up games for 13 year old boys were like, Okay, what do we do if like, the kid doesn't know where his hand is? And so his hand is on the screen, but then he wants to move it like what do we how are we going to do that. And so they're trying to kind of think in a very granular level about how to let a toddler do what they want on a screen. So the meeting that I sat on, and there was some sort of none of the games have a real objective. It's like, there's a car on a track, and they can come up and off the track. And there's like, it passes things. And that's it. And like funny things happen. And there's a rabbit that jumps out and then jumps down. It's not like you have to, nothing is gamified. And the meeting I was in on was about if there were three train cars that were connected, and a little kid wanted to make one of the cars flying up into the air. And they wanted that to be the second car, the middle car, what happens like does that come off and go way up and the other to reconnect underneath it? Does that pull up the other two with it? Does it do something? Does it disappear? And they had a long conversation about this? And I was like, This is crazy. But it's actually not because it's allowing the kid to dictate what happens. And the head of Sago Mini told me he said, You know what was amazing is that in the early days, we realize that kids do fewer things you have on the screen kids started narrating and telling their own story. So they would say and now the burglar is over here, and now the truck crumbles. And that's kind of what you want. That's kind of the best situation for something like this, where the kid is still using his or her imagination and making up stories and making connections with the real world and using their creativity as much as possible. So it can be lovely. And they're very muted. You know, when you go on Sago Mini stuff, it's not like there's a lot of stuff coming at you. It's not neon colors, it's just kind of like quiet, which is something I appreciate it.

Alexander Sarlin  33:22 
Yeah, so that seems like a relatively enlightened approach that goes to the sort of passive tools, active children, putting less on the screen gives the children more opportunity to interact and sort of insert their own narrative. Absolutely. So I think that's a good transition to e-books. So you have a chapter about the different ways in which children and parents may choose to read in 2022. And there's the benefits and drawbacks of e-books or audiobooks, which are increasingly popular versus traditional paper books. Talk to us about the different types of books and what you found in your book.

Sophie Brickman  33:57 
So the promise of ebooks is that it can kind of improve upon the print reading experience for young kids. Meaning that if you click on a word, it can tell you what the word is. And then your kid will learn how to read, it will kind of jazz things up by putting games in the middle of them. All of this sounds good on the surface. But when you kind of go deep into a kid's brain, like there's a wonderful researcher at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, who put young kids through an MRI to try to actually figure out what was going on. When you actually get into the research, you realize that most of that is bunk. And what he discovered, his name is John Hutton, there's something called the Goldilocks effect, which is that if you tell a child a story with just animation, it's too hot. The neurons don't exactly know how to fire the right way. If you just give them a story orally, with no picture books with no picture to look at, it's too cold. And I found this when I was with my kid when she was, I don't know, two years old. I tried to tell her story at bedtime and she just could not focus. I was like what's going on? I have this vision of me like telling you stories before you go to bed like my dad used to, but like until they're a little bit older, it's very, very helpful for them to have the picture of the thing to look at. And so they found that an analog book with pictures on it was the absolute perfect thing to help your neurons fire in a certain way. And so again, it's about the shared experience of interacting with anything. And if that's a book, it's a lot easier to not be distracted when it's just a book. Even if you know, I then I get questions from various people about what if it's a book on a Kindle? Is that okay? What if the book on my iPad? It's like, Yeah, but are all the notifications turned off? Like, do you look at that device as being only for reading? Like maybe for a Kindle, sure. But for an iPad? No. Does your kid look at that device as being only for reading? No, it's kind of confusing, it's kind of distracting. And in the very early stages of reading, what you're trying to do is just tell your kid, that reading is a lovely fun and kind of snuggly activity, it's a lot easier to do that with an analog book. That is one line of thought that I go along with, there is another one that I researched for a while, which is that it doesn't really matter what you're doing as long as there's like a button in your lap, and everybody's having a good time. So, fine, more reading, the better wherever it is. But the promise that an e book can improve upon an analog book for very young kids is not true.

Alexander Sarlin  36:19 
What about audiobooks?

Sophie Brickman  36:21 
I mean, to John Hutton's point, and to what I've heard, it takes a little while for a kid to be able to have the listening comprehension and kind of stamina to listen to an audio book. But when that happens, it unlocks. It's like amazing, I got Ella a little storyteller, people asked me what's like the best piece of tech you have in your house. It's a little storyteller. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure thing. And she can sit for hours and like, pick the hero and pick the special magical amulet or whatever. And then it'll tell her a story. And she can listen to it. And she loves it. But she was not able to do that until she was four, four and a half.

Alexander Sarlin  36:58 
That makes sense, because inherent reading a story would be a similar neurological experience to an audiobook, at least in some ways. So you need pictures up to a certain age. And then children can sort of match the spoken words with pictures mentally, only when they four or so.

Sophie Brickman  37:16 
Yes, something like that. But I think your presence is part and parcel of the reading experience for young kids is more of the point, which is that you being there with them and being calm and you can't like-- another researcher that I spoke to was like, You can't speed read goodnight book, like you can't do it. It's just not gonna listen. And so it kind of forces you to calm down a little bit too. The other thing I would say about analog books is, I met with a pediatrician who founded a literacy program that is now national, that is getting books into the hands of people at pediatricians visits, and I asked the same question to many people I interviewed, which was what is the best piece of technology out there? And I got a lot of different answers. And his was if you went to the greatest minds in the world, and you tried to get make something that would make kids more socially adept, more verbal, calmer, more resilient, and able to handle conflict, and just kind of better and nicer people all around, what would you make me? And he said, they would come back with a book. That is how powerful and sort of how magical a lot of people in the academic realms of childhood development view books, there's like really nothing better than a book.

Alexander Sarlin  38:28 
So interesting. We talk on the show a lot about how the education researchers and technologists don't always see eye to eye, or sometimes they don't even talk, they don't even sort of consult each other. And you have these parallel worlds. And I'm hearing it in real time in this conversation. There's all of these smart toys and ebook companies. And then there are these academic learning, researchers saying, let's keep to the basics, because they work really well. And picture books are there for a reason. I wonder if there's a way for the two sides to come together to develop some, it may not even be technology, but to develop some solutions and some new ideas that would be really interesting for parents and children.

Sophie Brickman  39:07 
I mean, I think the smart developers are like really trying to make that happen. And I had a very, very illuminating conversation, I gave a talk at Noggin, which is part of Nickelodeon, to their kind of internal team about my findings, and I kind of went on my little PowerPoint, and I was like, Well, you know, quick cuts are bad and slow is good, and Mr. Rogers. And then there was like in the chat, I saw like a million comments. And I was like, I'm gonna keep going and keep going. And then we'll open it up to conversation afterwards. And a bunch of the people who are creating these wonderful shows for kids were like, okay, but like you need to keep their attention. And so is it. okay, if we intercut like quick cuts with longer narrative things? And what about this? And I was like, Oh, this is the next level, which is that it is not black and white. It is a very complicated problem to solve. But I think if the right minds are putting their shoulders into it, or behind, it could be wonderful. I think right now, we're still in that figuring out phase where it isn't yet ideal. And what we want is for our children to be running around in forests by themselves, and like reading books and having wonderful state paid caregivers. And that's like really not the reality of most people's lives. And so it's more complicated than how I kind of quickly said it to you before. It is a very, very important and urgent problem that people who are smart are trying to solve.

Alexander Sarlin  40:26 
Your story about the Toca Boca founder and the forest in Scandinavia reminds me of one of my favorite sort of founder stories, which is that the founder of Pokemon, based on his experiences, going through the forest in Japan and finding all of these tiny animals and sort of capturing them or sort of trying to figure them out. And it always strikes me so interesting that some of the backstories of very digital products are very analog, they come from these sort of magical childhood experiences that have nothing to do with technology. It's just one of these funny sort of paradoxes of this world. Absolutely. I want to end with a classic question, which I'm sure you get all the time. But it is, I think, something our listeners would really like to know about, which is, in this world where slowness and presence is really important, how might a parent decide when to introduce screens? Whether those are videos or apps or ebooks to their children? When would they introduce screens, and on the flip side, how might they know or really feel that their child might be over indexing on screens at the expense of the real world sort of captured by the screen,

Sophie Brickman  41:31 
I don't think any parent needs help figuring out if their child has over index on the screen. Like I think the minute that they give them a screen and try to take it away, they will have a tantrum. And they'll be like, Oh, okay, that was too much. But I think one kind of rule of thumb that I learned from a very, very, very wonderful and smart researcher and pediatrician who helped write the screentime guidelines for the American Academy of Pediatrics. She was like, just as a rule of thumb, if you gave your kid anything, if you give them a screen, if you give them a toy that runs around, whatever it is, and you let them play with it for a little bit, and then with enough warning, you say I'm going to take it away in a little bit, okay, okay. And I'm going to take it away. And if you take it away, and they have an absolute meltdown, that's an indication that they are likely unable to handle whatever it is that's going on. And I've gotten a little bit of pushback from various people who are like, Well, kids have transmission problems all the time. Sure. But when I take a book away from my toddler, when I take a block away, it's very different experience than when I take a screen away. And so I think that's one way of kind of evaluating what your kid can handle. My kindergartner now, like for sure she's on the iPad, when she wakes up at 4:30 in the morning to start her day on a Saturday, and I need to stay asleep. But when I want to take it away, she can understand. And so I think that's a sort of simple rule of thumb to use. In terms of when to introduce it, it's very, very case by case but I would say hold off as long as you can. And try to understand that there's no reason to ratchet up the level of engagement, if the kid isn't indicating that they need it. If they're fine with a cardboard box, like do not give them a like car that roams around the room. If they're fine with that, do not give them a video game, like don't step it up before you really see an indication that they want you because ultimately, it's not as good for them as kind of coming up with that entertainment on their own.

Alexander Sarlin  43:28 
That's a fantastic guideline and makes a ton of sense. And I think the simpler the guideline, the better, right? If taking something away, drives a kid crazy than they're probably not ready for it, use bigger screens, watch with your children, watch things that you can handle, fewer cuts, the better. I think those are really fantastic takeaways that our listeners can walk away with. We end every podcast with two questions. The first is what is the most exciting trend that you've seen in all of your research and travels behind the book. What's a trend that you see in the landscape right now that you think our listeners should probably keep an eye on.

Sophie Brickman  44:01 
So I don't know if this is a trend, frankly, but it was like the real bright spot of reporting for me where it came like there was repeatedly people were like, no tech, no tech, no tech, it's not good for the kids. But then, there was one researcher, I believe she's at Georgetown, and she's working on an e-book that helps promote what's known as dialogic reading, which honestly is just like using the text as a way to talk to your kid. And what she found, like dialogic reading is the bread and butter of developmental psychology. Like the more you can talk about what's going on in the page, the better your kids neurons are firing, they're happier, they're more successful, they're going to get into Harvard and all that stuff. So she is trying to use technology as a way to encourage and sort of prompt parents to ask questions off of the page. And when I spoke to her, she was like, No, I don't want this to replace just regular reading without technology, but it is a really smart and scientifically backed way to help kids read and help parents engage with books in a way that is really beneficial for both of them. And I think kind of encouraging that makes the cycle more virtuous and keep going because that the more of the parents interested, the more that kid is going to be interested and then vice versa, on and on. So I would say I don't know if that's a trend yet. I think she's kind of like a pioneer in this. But my hope is that the e-book world kind of cants more towards her.

Alexander Sarlin  45:21 
I love that. It's dialogic reading and toys that help people connect, toys or books or apps that help people connect with each other, rather than just what the app is how I'm sort of gonna generalize that I hope that's it. And so what is a book that you would recommend for somebody who wants to dive deeper? Of course, other than your book, Baby Unplugged? What is another book you would recommend for somebody who wants to dive deeper into the topics we discussed today?

Sophie Brickman  45:45 
So I was just reading a book for a column that I'm writing for The Guardian. And I really enjoyed it. And it's called "The Enchanted Hour". And it's about the importance of reading out loud, both the neurology like neurological things that happens when both a parent and a kid, it's definitely a parenting book, but it really is interesting to anybody who is interested in reading and the power of words and specifically the power of speaking out loud. It was written by the Wall Street Journal's, I believe she was the book reviewer for children's books. And it gets into a lot of history about kind of how reading used to be very social and now is a very solitary endeavor and sort of what that means and what is lost. And the importance of she says carving out a full hour everyday to read to your kids. That's a tall order. But it is very, very interesting and speaks to kind of a way to stem the tide of technology in a very smart way.

Alexander Sarlin  46:34 
So that's "The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction" by Meghan Cox Gurdon. And as always, we will put that in our show notes a link directly to the book so you can find it there. Sophie Brickman, this has been a really interesting conversation, very different type of conversation than we usually have. Because I think it's skeptical about some of the technology that's out there and all the right ways. Sophie Brickman, author of "Baby Unplugged: One Mother's Search for Balance, Reason and Sanity in the Digital Age", thanks so much for being with us.

Sophie Brickman  47:05 
Thank you for having me.

Alexander Sarlin  47:06  
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