Despite building an increasingly screen-centric world, billionaire tech leaders are keeping their children away from the technology they helped create.
Back in 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told new york times The reporter said that his children have never used iPads. “We limit the number of technology products our children use at home.”
Since then, the trend among Silicon Valley billionaires to distance their families from technology has become more pronounced, in part due to the rise of social media and short-form videos.
Overuse of devices by children has become increasingly common in recent years as busy parents turn to screens for calm. The trend is growing so fast that some kids who are used to spending so much time looking at screens are being dubbed “iPad kids.” According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children ages 8 to 18 in the United States spend an average of 7.5 hours a day watching or using screens.
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen said in a speech at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business last year that he did not want his children to watch only short-form content, noting that it would be best to limit children’s viewing to videos longer than 15 minutes.
“Shorter content means shorter attention spans,” he said.
At the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, Chen was joined by billionaire early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, who joined the ranks of tech leaders who have set strict limits on screens. Thiel said he only lets his two children use screens for an hour and a half a week, a revelation that drew gasps from viewers.
Other tech CEOs, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Tesla’s Elon Musk, have also spoken out about limiting children’s use of devices. Gates said he didn’t give his children smartphones until they were 14 and completely banned their use at the dinner table. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in 2018 that he limits his children’s screen time to the same 1.5 hours a week as Thiel. Finally, Musk, who acquired social media company X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, said not setting any social media rules for his children “might be a mistake.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has said his children are too young to use TikTok, but he clarified in 2023 that he would allow his children to use the app if they lived in the United States and had access to strict protections related to the platform’s settings for children under 13. Even kids as young as 8 can use the platform in an under-13 experience, he said, which includes protections such as censored content, banned content and no ads.
Scientific research supports their nurturing instincts. A 2025 study of nearly 100,000 people found that for both younger and older social media users, short video use was consistently associated with poorer cognitive abilities and declines in many aspects of mental health.
Social media backlash is growing
As young people increasingly spend much of their waking hours online, the backlash against social media, especially its use by minors, has reached a critical point.
Last year, Australia and Malaysia became the first countries to ban social media for under-16s. Several other countries, including France, Denmark and the United Kingdom, are considering similar legislation.
Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand earlier this week to defend his company against claims from a 20-year-old accuser that the social media giant built its platform to appeal to young children.
However, far from being a new phenomenon, the idea that social media use is harmful to young people has been around for years. Still, it’s the technology leaders who create the attention economy who are most concerned about this fact.
To be sure, some social media CEOs have publicly pushed back against claims that their platforms are harmful. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified at Meta’s trial earlier this month that social media does not constitute a “clinical addiction.” Meta’s lawyers also outlined during the trial a series of safety features Instagram has introduced for younger users, including limiting the visibility of adult content and muting notifications at night.
Yet as trials against social media companies continue and country after country moves to legislate practices that Silicon Valley billionaires have quietly practiced for years, the private actions of the world’s most powerful tech figures stand in stark contrast to what they promote and build.
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
