TikTok Has Supercharged the Debate Over Sleep Training

In January 2021, Alice Bender made baby sleep go viral on TikTok. While holding her 5-month-old son, Fern, in his nursery, Bender, then 21, explained to her iPhone camera why he didn’t have a crib. “We literally buy these little baby jail cells so that we can just leave our baby in there and walk away,” she said. “I don’t have a crib because I will never enforce my baby to have a bedtime. Babies are people, too, and forcing anyone to sleep when they’re not tired is inhumane. Imagine if your partner locked you in a container you couldn’t get out of and told you you had to sleep even though you weren’t tired. That would be abuse, and you’d probably leave them.”

The post racked up more than 7 million views, made international headlines, and inspired an awful lot of tweets (“Next week on this lady’s tik tok: why I let my 5 month old drive”) before Bender took it down. But she didn’t stop offering baby-sleep advice. In a post from August 2021, she wrote, “There’s no such thing as sleep training.” Bender pointed to the words as music played. “But there is such a thing as training a baby they were left to die.”

A woman whose DNA from a rape kit was used by San Francisco police to arrest her for an unrelated crime is suing the city. Sustainable fashion efforts could run afoul of antitrust regulators. There are rumors going around about Leonardo DiCaprio and Gigi Hadid dating, but we have our doubts — since when does he date women as old as 27? Invite Jennifer Coolidge to all of the award shows. Henry Winkler, too. Charles’s ascension to the throne spells unemployment for a whole lot of his staff. Abolish the gerontocracy. A reminder to tell your friends that you love them. October, hurry up and arrive so we can see the new Stephen King–themed Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. And did you know there are animal chiropractors? Dream job.

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