Ding! Your baby’s diaper is wet. That’s the idea behind Lumi by Pampers, a new line of smart diapers that text-alerts parents when the baby needs changing, CNN reports. The product also tracks the baby’s sleep time and number of pees, but not—as a dad points out at Mashable—how often it poops. Like other products, Lumi includes a baby monitor that enables parents to watch the baby via an app. Among drawbacks, USA Today notes that parents will have to replace sensors every 13 weeks and buy only Lumi by Pampers diapers to get the sensor patch. And they come only in sizes zero to four. It’s coming in the fall but there’s no price yet.
One question is, why? Parents can usually tell when babies needs changing, and diapers often have a yellow line that becomes blue if the baby pees. The Financial Times sees a financial incentive for Pampers at time when millenials are having fewer babies and baby-care sales are falling—but the baby-monitor market rose nearly 18% to over $1 billion during the past two years. Meanwhile, privacy campaigners warn that data can be hacked and babies might deserve alone-time, too. “When does tracking every move become inappropriate surveillance?” parenting author Julie Lythcott-Haims asks the Washington Post. “…Pretty soon, we don’t have to worry because we’ll know everything from before birth to the end of their lives.”
