Second Life

Starred review from March 1, 2025
A panoramic query into how pregnancy, birth, and motherhood have been reshaped by technology and social media. At seven months pregnant, Hess spent an hour on an ultrasound table that became "the moment that [her] relationship with technology turned." Her first book traces the events leading up to that moment, and then the days, weeks, and years that followed, chronicling not only her personal experience but the many--sometimes unsettling--ways that it intersects with technology. Technology, for Hess, is a behemoth, including everything from common medical equipment to menstruation-tracking phone apps to the "motherhood internet" (and its anti-natalist mirror). Each twist or milestone in the author's story has a touchpoint with either diagnostic machinery, anonymous online message boards, data collection, or social media influencer accounts; each of those intersecting items has a history, context, and agenda related to the ideals and tensions of womanhood and society itself. Having reported on the nuances and phenomena of internet culture for theNew York Times and other publications, Hess brings to her subject humility, curiosity, and a sly, self-aware wit rooted partially in her own adoption of online life. She investigates both seemingly harmless, ubiquitous advances and more fringe online movements and characters with an open thoroughness that renders her trustworthy. Her sweeping and incisive research, paired with her personal vulnerability, reveals a series of slippery slopes and potential (and existing) ethical quagmires from which no prong of technology is entirely exempt. With her distinct perspective evolving in real time, she shares a fresh and complicated take on how the particular conditions of pregnancy and motherhood stretch and thin the lines that technologies, companies, and communities walk between informing and advertising, between monitoring and surveilling, and between sharing and judging. A captivating, charged, and crucially provocative consideration of motherhood in modern America.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 1, 2025
A New York Times correspondent on internet culture, Hess turns her focus inward with this candid story of how her overuse of digital media greatly influenced her journey through pregnancy and childbirth. Before conception was confirmed, the author reports being besieged with targeted marketing that gamified this highly personal endeavor. Hess asserts that the pervasiveness of externally driven, curated content encourages compulsive use, supports rumination, and invites demoralizing comparisons. She adds that extensive testing leading to inconclusive results compels parents to seek unsubstantiated internet information. Rather than providing reassurance and clarity, she asserts, the abundance of content deepens and expands anxiety. Stylized, alluring depictions of motherhood that proliferated during the pandemic capitalized on this emotionally fraught time. After birth, the messaging Hess received focused on the promotion of parental "pacifiers," products that sought to replace community support and pathologize normal behavior and development. Hess' experiences would be most useful as a cautionary tale for new parents, especially those with high-risk pregnancies, whose insecurities provide fertile ground for online profiteers seeking to exploit them.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.