A long, long time ago God invented mothers because He knew kids needed someone to:
- tuck them in bed at a decent hour so they could pay attention in school.
- remind them to be nice to their friends.
- shoo them outdoors to run around and get some exercise.
- make sure they ate 3 balanced meals a day.
- tell them to think a little while and see if they could figure out the answer for themselves.
- limit screen time.
- put them in the corner until they were done sassing and ready to treat people with respect.
- teach them to deposit half their allowance in the piggy bank so they learned to save.
- force them to drink water instead of pop because water is free.
- regale them with pregnancy stories.
- keep track of how often babies pee and poop and send older kids to sit on the toilet when they have stomach aches.
- tell kids to go upstairs and read a book ’cause they’re driving their parents crazy.
But according to yesterday’s episode of On Point (an NPR show hosted by Tom Ashbrook) entitled “The Quantified Self,” computer apps now can do everything mothers used to do. The webpage about the show lists the following what-your-mother-used-to-do apps:
- Sleep Cycle The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase. It aims to make you wake up more refreshed.
- Facebook Timeline The social networking site now includes a timeline feature that puts your interactions with the site and your network of friends in chronological order.
- Fitbit A machine that tracks your sleep and physical activity.
- Meal Snap Take a photo of the food you eat and this app — amazingly — can figure out how many calories you’ve consumed.
- Honestly Now helps you make decisions by getting you the answers you want to your burning questions.
- What Pulse This app tracks your keyboard and mouse use.
- Mood Scope This app records your daily mood, tracks it over time, and can be integrated with your friends — with the aim of improving your well-being.
- Mint An online tool to track your financial transactions.
- Waterlogged This app keeps track of how much water you’re drinking each day.
- My Pregnancy Today Track your pregnancy with this app.
- Baby Connect records information about your newborn: feeding (bottle, nursing, solid, pumping), diapers, sleep, mood, activities, milestones, health, medicines, vaccines, photos, and more.
- Azumio This app measures and records your stress levels.
I am not making this up, According to Tom Ashbrook and his guests, almost everything mothers used to monitor can now be monitored and quantified by computer apps.
Why? Well, Tom Ashbrook didn’t say why (click here to listen to the show), but my guess is that grown up app creators prefer having a computer analyze their lifestyles and tell them to get enough sleep, eat right, and get off their butts and exercise than to have their mothers tell them the same things. Or point out the obvious: Companies aren’t interested in hiring people engrossed in digitized navel gazing. People obsessing over data about their sleep cycles, diets moods, bowel movements, water intake, and financial transactions don’t have a social life. So these app gurus are stuck in an endless, self-perpetuating cycle. They sit around creating apps about everything and anything except what they need to hear.
Stop navel gazing and think about somebody else for a change!
But God knew young adults need someone to tell them the truth now and then.
So he created an app for that.
And named her Mom.
