Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age

"Hess's debut memoir bursts with humor and intelligence as it weaves the story of her own pregnancy....This unexpected page-turner is as vulnerable as it is sharp." --Vulture As an internet culture critic for The New York Times, Amanda Hess had built a reputation among readers as a sharp observer of the seductions and manipulations of online life. But when Hess discovered she was pregnant with her first child, she found herself unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis of her own. In the summer of 2020, a routine ultrasound detected a mysterious abnormality in Hess's baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search sucked her into the destabilizing morass of the internet, and she was vulnerable--more than ever--to conspiracy, myth, judgment, commerce, and obsession. As Hess documents her escalating relationship with the digital world, she identifies how technologies act as portals to troubling ideologie