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 don’t agree.
I started using the web as a curious 8 years old. I was pretending to be an adult in order to sign up to forums, chat with people, etc.
Yes, I was exposed to porn, gore (remember goatse?) but that didn’t make me dumb or a molester.
But nothing beats what I learned thanks to the internet. Endless days spent on programming forums, reading articles on a newborn Wikipedia, etc.
Even just talking with older people than me made me learn how to deal with things and life.
I don’t think that the internet for a kid is bad per se. I wouldn’t like a blanket ban for kids like the UK. If it was like that when I was a kid, I would probably be a more stupid person.
I think that the real bad thing is the stupid phones and apps that give you dopamine rushes.
I agree - mostly. But…things online are RADICALLY different now, vs late 90s / early 2000s.
I’ve outlined some of my media and tech curation for my kids above; I would LOVE for them to stumble across stuff like we did. Hell, in time, I’d even let them grok the edgier stuff (yes, like you, I was there 3000 years ago. I know of the old magics)
But that internet is long gone…or if not…severely booby trapped. The competence required of (say) a curious 8yr old in 2026 vs 2002 to navigate the online landscape and NOT encounter those booby traps (I feel) is several orders of magnitude higher.
I don’t think we can just park our kids in front of the 486 and say “here’s Encarta; have at it. Then I’ll show you this cool thing called a BBS”.
Kinda sucks.
Still, there are useful funnels / curation pathways. You CAN recreate that experience for your kids…but it’s no longer “are you winning, son?” set it and forget it meme. Now it’s “Daddy needs to be a part time sysadmin and know what’s what, so some pedo doesn’t catfish you for feet pics via ROBLOX”.
I hate to say this, but the Internet is not the same as it was back when I was growing up.
You always had the possibility of stumbling across a bad actor. Now the billionaire tech broligoply who own most social media are the bad actors. How many websites did you visit where the person running the website has been caught repeatedly trying to psychologically manipulate and control the masses via disinformation?
Back in the day, nobody would be doing whatever the fuck it is these people are doing with kids and their pedo adjacent targeted ads and chat bots bc they would be afraid of being sent to jail for cp
Corpocrap scrolley apps exploit you on purpose, but that doesn’t generalize. Not.that non techy people understand that