Despite building an increasingly screen-focused world, billionaire tech leaders are keeping their own children away from the tech they helped create.
As far back as 2010, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs told a New York Times reporter his kids had never used an iPad and that, “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
Since then, the trend of Silicon Valley billionaires keeping their families away from technology has become even more pronounced, thanks in part to the rise of social media and short-form video.
At the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, early Facebook investor and billionaire Peter Thiel joined Chen among the ranks of tech leaders who are setting strict limits on screens. Thiel said he only lets his two young children use screens for an hour-and-a-half per week, a revelation that prompted audible gasps from the audience.
Other tech CEOs, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and Tesla’s Elon Musk, have also spoken about limiting their children’s access to devices. Gates has said he did not give his children smartphones until age 14 and banned phones at the dinner table entirely. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, in 2018, said he limits his child to the same 1.5 hours per week of screen time as Thiel. And finally, Musk, who bought the social media company X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, said it “might’ve been a mistake” to not set any rules on social media for his children.
Yet, as the trials against social media companies continue and country after country moves toward legislating what Silicon Valley’s billionaires have quietly practiced for years, the private behavior of the world’s most powerful tech figures stands in contrast to what they’re promoting and building
I love how Elon Musk was the sole fuck up in these examples
Lol I’ve always known this. People are beyond retarded now. Like biggie use to say
" Never get high on your own supply "
Because they know their kids will have an advantage over the stupefied masses if they can keep them unmezmerizes.
And they’ve convinced you that it’s a-okay for your kids to be using these products, in full knowledge of the harm they cause.
It’s so fucking creepy. It’s not just making people dumber, its literally exposing kids to sexual content and sexualizing children in advertisements aimed at adults.
At what point is it ok for all of society to demand these people either be put in jail or at least exiled from the rest of society?
Meta CEO Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors, court filing alleges
Regulations are keeping your businesses from thriving? The ones you seem to be building to intentionally cater to pedophiles and harm children? Half of these creepy ass broligarchs are already confirmed to be in the Epstein files.
They’re pretty open about what they want the future to look like, and the shit they’ve already got going, like the inescapable 24/7 surveillance where they can pick and choose the victims they want to legally abduct and traffic is just the beginning. And we’re supposed to just pretend we’re all fucking stupid enough to go along with it?
People get pissed at me but, as a short-term solution, I’m okay with giving up my ID in order to lock kids out. I personally think it is the lesser of two exceedingly great evils.
Ideally, there’d be federal regulation of these platforms in every country banning algorithmically-elevated content, ads, privacy violations, and holding the operators of these platforms accountable for CSAM, but I think that will take decades.
Why does it need to take decades though?
I bet if there were actual consequences for this shit, like in the form of seizing assets from the broligarchs who run these companies, and giving them to the victims of their creations, the issue would be solved very quickly.
Well, they know why. And they know that most of the people are stupid as a stone. This is how they made their money.
Duh. You think the CEO of Kraft feeds his kids mac and cheese from a box?
Wow what a surprise. I can’t imagine anyone better to know how unsafe something is other than the lead architects themselves.
Other tech CEOs, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and Tesla’s Elon Musk, have also spoken about limiting their children’s access to devices. Gates has said he did not give his children smartphones until age 14 and banned phones at the dinner table entirely. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, in 2018, said he limits his child to the same 1.5 hours per week of screen time as Thiel.
Seems like these failures suing them & demanding government paternalism
Yet, as the trials against social media companies continue and country after country moves toward legislating what Silicon Valley’s billionaires have quietly practiced for years
don’t know how to effectively limit access/use parental controls as tech CEOs claim to do.
This behavior seems to be very similar to NFL stars and how they never wanted their kids to play football.
Everyone involved knows how dangerous social media/football is and many of them are in positions to actually do something about it. But because it benefits them personally, they won’t even rock the boat.
YouTube cofounder Steve Chen said at a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business last year that he wouldn’t want his kids consuming only short-form content, noting that it might be better to limit kids to videos longer than 15 minutes.
I hope this is introduced at the LA trial in some form that demonstrates the why.
I should not be amazed, but I still am, at the entire lack of morality that tech entrepreneurs have post dotcom bursting.
Yeah, but the Epstein class wants us conditioned to be as forgetful as their LLMs, and compartmentalized like good robots so we reset to compliance by default without connecting too many dots. Concentration and focus are how you exercise consciousness, which is the opposite of what the ruling class wants. They’ve literally attempted to and in the minds of many individuals they’ve succeeded in framing consciousness as a “mind virus”.
They’re subhumans with no morality or code of ethics whose sights are set on more and more wealth, spiralling them further into the depths of depravity and the cardinal sin of greed.
Greed begets more greed, but unlike gluttony and wrath, the billionaires’ deterioration doesn’t manifest itself physically, so they allow themselves to become evermore corrupted by it until they become a fountain of disease, rotting and decaying everything around them.
Calling someone “subhuman” is the language of a supremacist. They are some of the absolute worst examples of humanity, yes, but they are still human. Referring to them as subhuman abdicates humanity’s responsibility to bring them to justice and to build systems that prevent a disproportionate concentration of power and influence.
“Our technology is perfectly safe and harmless for all ages!”
“So you would let your own children use it?”
“Nooo. No no no no no no. God no.”
“Are you kidding? I KNOW how addicting we make that shit. I don’t want my kids anywhere near it.”
This isn’t new. I remember fifteen years ago some Silicon Valley app engineers forbade their children from playing the games that were being developed.
It’s because they’re engineered to use your psychology against you. This is by design.
banned phones at the dinner table entirely
I would everyone is doing this. Sitting down to eat together once a day and talk isn’t something only billionaires can afford.
How cute. They think the things billionaires say for ammo in the evential lawsuit are actually true.
Fucking degenerate assholes, pushing drugs knowing full well how harmful it is.
