11 ms·

YouTube's CEO limits his kids' social media use – other tech bosses do the same

210 points by pseudolus 11mo ago

concinds 11mo ago
Meanwhile “normal” (neglectful) parents give iPads or internet-connected computers to 5-year olds. They never stood a chance.
- Forgeties79 11mo ago
  It’s rarely quite that simple and I would try being a little more charitable towards people.
  - mrweasel 11mo ago
    Exactly, it's a to easy to when people go "Simply set boundaries", "just do this", "use this". A lot of parents don't have a resources, either in terms of mental, energy, resource, knowledge and what not to fight and protect their children from things that are designed to be addictive, hell most of them are stuck in the same hell as their kids. Not acknowledging that this stuff is hard, and being made unnecessarily hard by commercial interest show a lack of understand and respect for the situations. These also aren't bad parents, they try, but it's an uphill battle for many.
    - iteria 11mo ago
      People give this excuse but somehow I feel like they would be less charitable if it was any othet addictive thing. "Oh, Timmy had a drinking problem at 13? Well we can't blame the parents. They don't have the mental or emotional strength to keep their kid out of the liquor cabinet. How ever could they know about locks?" That's what this feels like to me. As someone who is watching this happen in real time with my kid's peers, a lot parents just don't want to be bothered. And that's their right, but setting up the parental controls baked into all these devices is dead simple. They could, but they don't want to deal with whining or the exception moments. That's their right as a parent, but I don't subscribe to the "poor exhausted parents" theory when they had enough energy to buy these devices and set them up for the kid to use in the first place. It's a couple more minutes to enable the parent controls.
      - Forgeties79 11mo ago
        You can have a healthy relationship with screens at 13. You can’t have a healthy relationship with alcohol at 13.
        kelnos 11mo ago
        True, but that doesn't invalidate the GP's point.
        Forgeties79 11mo ago
        If that example is supposed to illustrate his point then yes it does on some level. It’s a major flaw. That’s why I pointed it out.
michaeljx 11mo ago
I am sure the coca-cola boss limits his kids soft drink consumption too.
- jasonsb 11mo ago
  Does it really matter? Even if a billionaire’s kid gets hooked on Coca-Cola or social media, they still have vastly more resources (therapy, education, support) to overcome it. Meanwhile, kids in underprivileged communities don’t get that safety net. For CEOs like Zuckerberg or Coca-Cola’s leadership, that disparity is just a small price to pay for the profits their products generate.
  - michaeljx 11mo ago
    It's part of the parental responsibility to provide enough structure and instill enough discipline to your kids so that they grow to be complete persons. Sure it will be nice if social media was restricted like tobacco, and I am sure one day it will, but you can't relegate all responsibility for everything to the state. I don't want to live in a bubble wrapped society for the sake of the children.
- tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
  I expect Sergey and Brin run ad-blockers as well.
  - notpushkin 11mo ago
    What about Larry and Page?
    - tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
      Them as well.
rightbyte 11mo ago
Ye and Zuckerberg plugs the laptop mic with a dud cable. I guess most parents try to limit screen time. But some have a hard time doing it since it is a great babysitter. I try to do a total blockade of YT at home for kids. Watching other kids be hypnothized by the feed years ago was enough. The algorithm seems to converge to unboxing videos and surreal spam.
- concinds 11mo ago
  > But some have a hard time doing it since it is a great babysitter. We should be clearer on what it means. An iPad will satisfy their need for stimulation but not their developmental emotional and social needs, nor their fine motor skills and executive functioning skills (and it likely harms the latter two, unlike old-school toys). Boredom and non-excessive stimulation levels are essential to letting the child’s inner world develop. Giving young kids iPads so they’ll be quiet is a normalized form of neglect.
  - politelemon 11mo ago
    It's worse, iPads don't satisfy the simulation but instead create a harmful dependency on it. I'll go as far to say that giving young kids iPads is a form of abuse that doesn't get called out.
    - concinds 11mo ago
      Significant emotional neglect will put you in the 1st or 2nd decile of emotional health. It can make you a total train wreck. I don’t think every bad thing needs to be abuse.
    - seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
      iPads are so easy to lockdown though, Apple did a good job on their parental controls. Roblox is the main brain stealer these days with a horrible social component, we only give our kid an hour a week now and even Thats probably too much.
  - seneca 11mo ago
mattgreenrocks 11mo ago
All ages benefit from time-limited exposure to social media. We have a term for it now: brainrot. Fully convinced it is the cigarettes of our generation: ubiquitous enough to be pervasive despite negative externalities.
- colechristensen 11mo ago
  "brainrot" is not used that way https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brainrot https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brainrot The best definition I see is > the crippling addiction to low effort content But also have seen it used plenty to refer to the low effort content itself Brainrot is a small portion of social media
  - oersted 11mo ago
    I have seen it used plenty by younger people even in a positive sense as a genre label for the aesthetics and humor of their generation.
- Thorrez 11mo ago
  >All ages benefit from time-limited exposure to social media. As compared to what? To no exposure? Or to unlimited exposure?
  - elestor 11mo ago
    Unlimited.
  - Jaxan 11mo ago
    As opposed to unlimited exposure. There are also many adults that spend several hours per day on social media. It’s not good for society.
- amelius 11mo ago
  In schools there should be a class about safe internet use and it should be mandatory to write an essay about the benefits children get personally from using social media as well as the downsides.
pj_mukh 11mo ago
[flagged]
- Pooge 11mo ago
  Their point is that despite being the designers of such systems, they prevent their own children from using them. Akin to a drug dealer not consuming what he sells.
  - techblueberry 11mo ago
    Although I hate social media with a passion and would be fine if the government banned it outright, I don’t think this is a fair reading. Do toy manufacturers let their kids play with their toys 24 hours a day and not go outside or do homework? Video game devs? Parents are supposed to help their kids limit their time in everything. ‘He stressed “everything in moderation”’
    - OccamsMirror 11mo ago
      > Do toy manufacturers let their kids play with their toys 24 hours a day and not go outside or do homework? I bet toy manufacturers have never had to think: "is this toy bad for my child's development?"
      - techblueberry 11mo ago
        Really? 10 of the worst toys for your child’s learning and development: https://ilslearningcorner.com/2018-12-learning-toys-10-of-the-worst-toys-for-your-childs-learning-development/ https://ilslearningcorner.com/2018-12-learning-toys-10-of-th... There are actually some pretty big risks especially in terms of like motor development, and considering now they’re adding a splash of AI to everything and a ton of toys have screens, well.
      - IncreasePosts 11mo ago
        Is any YouTube bad for their child's development? Or just spending large amounts of time on it with no adult supervision?
petercooper 11mo ago
Somehow we've not had the problem (yet). They get bored quickly and self-limit themselves, though we reserve the right to look at what they're up to whenever we see fit. Having lots of extracurricular activities might be helping, but my introverted, nerdy self spent way more time glued to a CRT as a teen. Hmm, maybe that's the secret.. having a nerd for a dad makes tech look uncool! :-D
adverbly 11mo ago
This has been the case for a while. Look up Waldorf schools. Screen free.
- dmurray 11mo ago
  I attended a screen free school, but back then we just called it a school.
- hamburglar 11mo ago
  Careful. Waldorf schools have some great ideas but they’re also rife with crackpottery and are somewhat cult-like in many ways.
  - jswelker 11mo ago
    But they do have great salads.
  - derwiki 11mo ago
    Curious about the crackpottery and cultiness? I’m on board with some of their rules, but no listening to prerecorded music is where they lose me.
    - olelele 11mo ago
      The problem with spaces like this is that manipulative people easily take over the rudder for the whole school combined with that it attracts a certain kind of free-thinking and liberal people who get wooed in and enable it all. Edit: there is a Swedish documentary about one of the schools my brother went to. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14688132 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14688132
    - hamburglar 11mo ago
      All Waldorf schools aren’t created equal, but things I’ve seen are anti-vax beliefs, hard belief in mystical karmic stuff, a sort of groupthink that encourages conformity and obedience and shunning of people who question authority, and (and this one is really strange IMO) a prohibition on fantasy play among the children (eg you aren’t allowed to pretend you’re running a restaurant and your friends are guests —- for reasons of crackpottery).
mikeodds 11mo ago
I don’t think this idea is that controversial? Most (?) people would agree watching YouTube 16 hrs a day is bad, but agree there is also a benefit to some of the content available.
- dredmorbius 11mo ago
  It's almost as if ... being able to download specific content for offline viewing ... might be a far preferable option in terms of selection, control, and not getting sucked into an algorithmic wormhole.
  - Nasrudith 11mo ago
    Or perhaps that algorithms are just a scapegoat for the ignorant and superstitious and yet another example of the oh so trendy serf mentality that takes no responsibility for their own life and its progreession.
    - dredmorbius 11mo ago
      1. Being able to specifically curate and manage content, by downloading it, is precisely the user-centric self-sovereignty which counters that serf mentality. And Google (and numerous other algorithmically-driven services) explicitly target and disable such tools where and when they can. See the ongoing war against yt-dlp, extensively discussed on HN: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=yt%2Ddlp https://hn.algolia.com/?q=yt%2Ddlp>. Not to mention the earlier youtube-dl: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=youtube-dl&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>. Another was mps-youtube, a CLI client which was hands-down the best interface YouTube ever had. Search (videos, channels), list-creation, download, and playback preferences (audio-only, which I largely prefer, full video, specified video resolution and/or audio quality, etc.), all locally managed without any obligation for a YouTube account. Of course Google killed it by way of its API key. See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36149183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36149183> and generally <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=mps-youtube%20&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>. 2. Just how much autonomy, wisdom, and ability to counter teams of highly-paid and highly-qualified attention engineers do you expect children and infants to possess? Or even their harried and distracted parents? Arguments for self-restraint against commercial addiction merchants have played poorly for well over 150 years, going back to the unregulated hawking of morphine- and cocaine-laced products, amongst others.
websiteapi 11mo ago
It’s not just about limiting - why don’t these people make it easier on the apps themselves to do it? We know why.
- Waterluvian 11mo ago
  YouTube Kids itself has a parental locked section where you can set a timer. The rest just don’t feel like they’re meant for kids at all. And that leaves adolescents in such a vulnerable spot.
  - websiteapi 11mo ago
    The kids or non kids distinction is irrelevant. It’ll be clear once most of the world implements child block (which I personally disagree with). They’re gonna get decimated.
- seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
  It’s more convenient to use Apple’s parental control feature because you can set limits in one place.
  - fullshark 11mo ago
    My kid found work arounds for that. For example she reset the ipad's clock to give herself more time. It really is like a drug to these children and they will lash out at you if you take it away.
    - seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
      If you are HN you know how to RTFM, I guess. The Fix: Lock it Down: Go to Settings > Screen Time. Tap Turn On Screen Time (if not already on) and set it up for your child. Tap Use Screen Time Passcode and create a passcode that the child doesn't know. Go to Content & Privacy Restrictions (under Screen Time) and turn it on. Tap Allowed Apps (to disable camera/other apps if needed) and Change Restrictions. Under Content & Privacy Restrictions, find Date & Time Changes and set it to Don't Allow Changes or Require Password.
markus_zhang 11mo ago
Just throw it out of the window. I'm not going to give my 6y son access to a smart phone until he is much older, ideally when he is in senior high school. The only issue is that his future friends may not have the same idea, so it's going to be extremely difficult when he grows older. Fortunately we have a mobile ban in the school, so at least they know this is not a good thing.
- Forgeties79 11mo ago
  The problem with this approach is their peers. Prohibition culture does not work if it’s so easy to access it elsewhere. My parents learned this when they tried to restrict video games strictly to the weekends when I was a kid haha! I find having conversations with parents at school and the parents of their friends leads to the best results (so far, I’ve only been at it a few years for my kiddos so we’ll see I guess longterm). If you’re all vaguely on the same page it just seems to make things a little easier. If that’s not an option, then just don’t be the first person to buy one and when all their peers start having certain technology you give them access too, but you sit down and talk to them about it or find ways to restrict the faucet. For instance, when it became clear YouTube was not going to be completely eradicated from my house, I just ripped a few videos and added them to my Plex server. They get to watch a little bit of nonsense content, but they’re not just getting flooded with more of it constantly (or ads). As a result those YT videos are just one among several things they watch. It isn’t special or all consuming. Video games have also been interesting. Most of the parents I know have, like me, adopted to use older stuff and/or just not let them get on the Internet. Ultimately at some point you have to do some combination of “controlling the faucet,” watching what your kids are watching so you know what’s going on, and ultimately educating them/giving them context to the media they are enjoying.
  - markus_zhang 11mo ago
    Yeah we are doing that now. But I don’t know what to do if all his peers are on social media. I already know some of his friends have extensive screen time — their parents don’t care.
RHSman2 11mo ago
CEO of tobacco do the same. What’s your point? We sell things that are bad for humans. It’s a significant part of our global GDP
mrkramer 11mo ago
Instead of teaching kids self control they snatch stuff from them left and right.
- Xiol 11mo ago
  You clearly don't have children.
juujian 11mo ago
On that note, I'm happy to let my daughter play switch, because it has the best system for limiting screentime that I've see to date. I can set a limit, and then I can increase that limit for the day or lock it down again, remotely from the app. Very streamlined experience, clearly made by someone with user experience. In comparison, on iOS the system is janky and the Chromecast it's close to broken (and feels like abandonware).
- piyuv 11mo ago
  Switch is an overall better choice for kids anyway, lots of kid friendly high quality games and they can even get some exercise in (switch sports, warioware, fitness boxing, Mario tennis)
orochimaaru 11mo ago
Screen time features exist on most devices. Parents - please set them up. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. I limit my kids for 1/2 hr of screen time per day. I exclude apps like iMessage, phone and maps. Yeah - they do ask for more time here and there. But it’s pretty well controlled and they adjust to it
- 627467 11mo ago
  Do you not find unrestricted iMessages to be problematic? Dont groups and content sharing in them end-up fomenting a similar doomscroll dynamic as access to other content rich apps?
  - orochimaaru 11mo ago
    Not a whole lot of doomscrolling. There is more engagement - but I’ve resigned to the fact that it’s how kids communicate. For example - if they need to discuss homework or projects or even something simple as plan for boba tea. I’d rather they walk to their friends’ place. But now they make the plan and then walk to where they need to be.
- eitally 11mo ago
  Personally (as parent of two high schoolers) I think leaving texting unmanaged is wild. We block social media apps (Snap, IG, etc) and also regular media (YT, Netflix, Disney+, Tubi, etc). Social media because of toxic content and regular media because of distractions. We limit messaging app time to 30min/day, whether it's SMS/RCS, Whatsapp, Telegram, or something else. By far the most distracting thing for kids is persistent notifications. Snap is the worst for this, but messaging apps are a close second.
  - peterbecich 11mo ago
    Great point. We need parental controls for throttling non-critical notifications. Study: Average teen received more than 200 app notifications a day https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/study-average-teen-received-more-200-app-notifications-day https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/study-average-te...
dudeinjapan 11mo ago
In other news: Philip Morris CEO limits his kids' cigarette use.
conception 11mo ago
This thread is person after person saying “oh wow, person who sells terrible thing for humanity doesn’t let their kids have unlimited access to terrible thing! It’s so obvious. This isn’t news.” The news is that the CEO of youtube is saying that Youtube is something that should be limited and he thinks harm will come to his children if he does not. This may be obvious to people on this site but a lot of normal people think it’s fine. It’s shocking as for a lot of people it’s more like “CEO of cucumber farm limits cucumbers for their child!” As that’s how Google markets youtube for kids.
- dmix 11mo ago
  To me it seems like basic parenting to limit access to tech. It wasn’t healthy for kids to just play video games every day for 5hrs straight after school in the 90s either. But that also doesn’t mean they should never have had a PlayStation or all gaming is bad.
  - ragequittah 11mo ago
    The research on video games indicates that it tends to enhance certain skills like spatial awareness and reflex time. They're also pretty decent social / competitive outlets. The research on social media indicates that it lowers attention span and increases anxiety, depression, and anger. And my personal opinion is it's the reason we're seeing crazy things that I can't fathom happening without it like the measles resurgence. Neither should be used for 5 hours a day but the consequences don't seem comparable to me. The only place they do align is you should probably be exercising more instead.
- just_once 11mo ago
  Hacker News is not representative of the average person in often very bad ways.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo ago
  It's also person after person telling people to parent harder.
andrepd 11mo ago
Dealers and dope peddlers don't get high on their own supply.
lukasm 11mo ago
how about a nighttime ban (10 p.m.–7 a.m.) for users under 18?
- dmix 11mo ago
  The planet doesn’t operate under the same time zone and that’d be easy to bypass. Just take your kids phone away or set up parental screen time or network controls.
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  Remember when most TV stations went off the air after the late news?
oliwarner 11mo ago
This isn't hypocrisy, it's parenting. Do you think the Pfizer CEO lets their kids have unlimited Viagra? Or the Anheuser-Busch CEO's kids have unlimited Bud Light? I don't think this is the gotcha it's painted as.
- dmix 11mo ago
  It’s always some other persons poor kid in their imagination with bad parents. Basically the only solutions I see suggested is some world where all tech companies in multiple countries band together to ban kid/teens from the internet or that government will start aggressively controlling access to the internet. A big movement to have better education on parenting with tech and evolving via cultural changes is hard. Writing a law sounds simple.
- prakashk 11mo ago
  The hypocrisy is not because they are limiting access to their kids. It is because they are limiting access to their kids, while actively creating and executing algorithms to increase user engagement even to the point of making people addictive and dependent on their platforms.
  - naian 11mo ago
    But that would affect their children exactly the same. It doesn't, because they do some parenting. (Or subcontract it, which is the same thing.)
- floren 11mo ago
  I think you'd have a stronger point if stores sold Bud Kidz, a non-alcoholic beverage with all the great Bud taste and fun mascots.
  - sokoloff 11mo ago
    Indeed, the beer companies are far above having Clydesdales and puppies in their ads, or fun dog mascots like Spuds MacKenzie or Alex from Stroh's.
throwawayk7h 11mo ago
The previous CEO did the same thing.
arjie 11mo ago
I've certainly spent a lot of my life on social media - even as a child. It's just that back then the media was the forum that my friends and I ran; the other forums we talked on; and then later the video-games we played. There certainly is an increase in the amount of addictiveness now of the feed. I was always easily addicted to writing and reading a lot of online text (a lot of which was just garbage on both sides) but the habit seems stronger now. I wonder what changed. I'm trying a couple of experiments: one is to reduce engagement bait stuff by blocking users who say it; and the other is to try to end infinite-feeds. I think I have a desire to 'correct' other people and a desire to 'complete' the feed. If I can eliminate these two, I wonder if I can reduce the problem.
rdsubhas 11mo ago
The way this article is written, saying "tech boss" implies de-facto boss of the home and the child's behavior, is flat and silly. Both parents are bosses of the home. If one parent does not co-operate to limit social media — it's unlimited by default for the kid.
- kelnos 11mo ago
  No, in this context, "tech boss" refers to parents who are also executives of technology companies. I agree with the point you make in the rest of your post, but it feels not really relevant given your misunderstanding?
duxup 11mo ago
Truth is that NOTHING beats parental involvement. That's it. No law or tech will change that that. That CEOs recognize this should be no surprise, same goes for non CEOs.
Desafinado 11mo ago
The world is going to be underwater in a couple decades and we're fighting the world's biggest companies from eviscerating children's public education. It's not looking good. If there's any lesson to come from this (ha, learning) it's that we need to stop venerating successful business people. It turns out they're just people who like money and don't think about the consequences of their actions.
1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago
"Recommendations" should be optional. I can recall early days of "recommendation engines". Never thought it would lead to this The "algorithmic feeds" in Facebook, YouTube are greed-based No user ever asked for them. They could be optional. But they are mandatory. A significant amount of user control is transferred to the company. ByteDance took this even further, arguably it has 100% control. Now Facebook and YouTube, and others, all have some form of this, rolls, shorts, whatever What's interesting is the companies, no matter what the harm alleged to stem from the "algorithmic feeds", will not back down on "recommending" content. No compromise I think that's telling. Perhaps traffic would plummet, stock price would tank No one should be surprised by the legislation this had spurned
dubeye 11mo ago
more likely his nanny manager enforces the rule He probably also limits his kids exposure to public services
tsoukase 11mo ago
We parents are in a constant war with screen use by our children. It causes a cognitive dependence that is translated to a chemical one (dopamine etc). I don't blame the mega corps and their CEOs, they are legal money makers not cultural leaders. We are winning and losing battles everyday and that depends on factors like child temperament and age, school, peers etc. I believe my children will thank me for that later.

210 points by pseudolus 11mo ago

Meanwhile “normal” (neglectful) parents give iPads or internet-connected computers to 5-year olds. They never stood a chance.

Forgeties79 11mo ago
It’s rarely quite that simple and I would try being a little more charitable towards people.
- mrweasel 11mo ago
  Exactly, it's a to easy to when people go "Simply set boundaries", "just do this", "use this". A lot of parents don't have a resources, either in terms of mental, energy, resource, knowledge and what not to fight and protect their children from things that are designed to be addictive, hell most of them are stuck in the same hell as their kids. Not acknowledging that this stuff is hard, and being made unnecessarily hard by commercial interest show a lack of understand and respect for the situations. These also aren't bad parents, they try, but it's an uphill battle for many.
  - iteria 11mo ago
    People give this excuse but somehow I feel like they would be less charitable if it was any othet addictive thing. "Oh, Timmy had a drinking problem at 13? Well we can't blame the parents. They don't have the mental or emotional strength to keep their kid out of the liquor cabinet. How ever could they know about locks?" That's what this feels like to me. As someone who is watching this happen in real time with my kid's peers, a lot parents just don't want to be bothered. And that's their right, but setting up the parental controls baked into all these devices is dead simple. They could, but they don't want to deal with whining or the exception moments. That's their right as a parent, but I don't subscribe to the "poor exhausted parents" theory when they had enough energy to buy these devices and set them up for the kid to use in the first place. It's a couple more minutes to enable the parent controls.
    - Forgeties79 11mo ago
      You can have a healthy relationship with screens at 13. You can’t have a healthy relationship with alcohol at 13.
      - kelnos 11mo ago
        True, but that doesn't invalidate the GP's point.
        Forgeties79 11mo ago
        If that example is supposed to illustrate his point then yes it does on some level. It’s a major flaw. That’s why I pointed it out.

michaeljx 11mo ago

I am sure the coca-cola boss limits his kids soft drink consumption too.

jasonsb 11mo ago
Does it really matter? Even if a billionaire’s kid gets hooked on Coca-Cola or social media, they still have vastly more resources (therapy, education, support) to overcome it. Meanwhile, kids in underprivileged communities don’t get that safety net. For CEOs like Zuckerberg or Coca-Cola’s leadership, that disparity is just a small price to pay for the profits their products generate.
- michaeljx 11mo ago
  It's part of the parental responsibility to provide enough structure and instill enough discipline to your kids so that they grow to be complete persons. Sure it will be nice if social media was restricted like tobacco, and I am sure one day it will, but you can't relegate all responsibility for everything to the state. I don't want to live in a bubble wrapped society for the sake of the children.
tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
I expect Sergey and Brin run ad-blockers as well.
- notpushkin 11mo ago
  What about Larry and Page?
  - tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
    Them as well.

rightbyte 11mo ago

Ye and Zuckerberg plugs the laptop mic with a dud cable. I guess most parents try to limit screen time. But some have a hard time doing it since it is a great babysitter. I try to do a total blockade of YT at home for kids. Watching other kids be hypnothized by the feed years ago was enough. The algorithm seems to converge to unboxing videos and surreal spam.

concinds 11mo ago
> But some have a hard time doing it since it is a great babysitter. We should be clearer on what it means. An iPad will satisfy their need for stimulation but not their developmental emotional and social needs, nor their fine motor skills and executive functioning skills (and it likely harms the latter two, unlike old-school toys). Boredom and non-excessive stimulation levels are essential to letting the child’s inner world develop. Giving young kids iPads so they’ll be quiet is a normalized form of neglect.
- politelemon 11mo ago
  It's worse, iPads don't satisfy the simulation but instead create a harmful dependency on it. I'll go as far to say that giving young kids iPads is a form of abuse that doesn't get called out.
  - concinds 11mo ago
    Significant emotional neglect will put you in the 1st or 2nd decile of emotional health. It can make you a total train wreck. I don’t think every bad thing needs to be abuse.
  - seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
    iPads are so easy to lockdown though, Apple did a good job on their parental controls. Roblox is the main brain stealer these days with a horrible social component, we only give our kid an hour a week now and even Thats probably too much.
- seneca 11mo ago

mattgreenrocks 11mo ago

All ages benefit from time-limited exposure to social media. We have a term for it now: brainrot. Fully convinced it is the cigarettes of our generation: ubiquitous enough to be pervasive despite negative externalities.

colechristensen 11mo ago
"brainrot" is not used that way https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brainrot https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brainrot The best definition I see is > the crippling addiction to low effort content But also have seen it used plenty to refer to the low effort content itself Brainrot is a small portion of social media
- oersted 11mo ago
  I have seen it used plenty by younger people even in a positive sense as a genre label for the aesthetics and humor of their generation.
Thorrez 11mo ago
>All ages benefit from time-limited exposure to social media. As compared to what? To no exposure? Or to unlimited exposure?
- elestor 11mo ago
  Unlimited.
- Jaxan 11mo ago
  As opposed to unlimited exposure. There are also many adults that spend several hours per day on social media. It’s not good for society.
amelius 11mo ago
In schools there should be a class about safe internet use and it should be mandatory to write an essay about the benefits children get personally from using social media as well as the downsides.

pj_mukh 11mo ago

[flagged]

Pooge 11mo ago
Their point is that despite being the designers of such systems, they prevent their own children from using them. Akin to a drug dealer not consuming what he sells.
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  Although I hate social media with a passion and would be fine if the government banned it outright, I don’t think this is a fair reading. Do toy manufacturers let their kids play with their toys 24 hours a day and not go outside or do homework? Video game devs? Parents are supposed to help their kids limit their time in everything. ‘He stressed “everything in moderation”’
  - OccamsMirror 11mo ago
    > Do toy manufacturers let their kids play with their toys 24 hours a day and not go outside or do homework? I bet toy manufacturers have never had to think: "is this toy bad for my child's development?"
    - techblueberry 11mo ago
      Really? 10 of the worst toys for your child’s learning and development: https://ilslearningcorner.com/2018-12-learning-toys-10-of-the-worst-toys-for-your-childs-learning-development/ https://ilslearningcorner.com/2018-12-learning-toys-10-of-th... There are actually some pretty big risks especially in terms of like motor development, and considering now they’re adding a splash of AI to everything and a ton of toys have screens, well.
    - IncreasePosts 11mo ago
      Is any YouTube bad for their child's development? Or just spending large amounts of time on it with no adult supervision?

petercooper 11mo ago

Somehow we've not had the problem (yet). They get bored quickly and self-limit themselves, though we reserve the right to look at what they're up to whenever we see fit. Having lots of extracurricular activities might be helping, but my introverted, nerdy self spent way more time glued to a CRT as a teen. Hmm, maybe that's the secret.. having a nerd for a dad makes tech look uncool! :-D

adverbly 11mo ago

This has been the case for a while. Look up Waldorf schools. Screen free.

dmurray 11mo ago
I attended a screen free school, but back then we just called it a school.
hamburglar 11mo ago
Careful. Waldorf schools have some great ideas but they’re also rife with crackpottery and are somewhat cult-like in many ways.
- jswelker 11mo ago
  But they do have great salads.
- derwiki 11mo ago
  Curious about the crackpottery and cultiness? I’m on board with some of their rules, but no listening to prerecorded music is where they lose me.
  - olelele 11mo ago
    The problem with spaces like this is that manipulative people easily take over the rudder for the whole school combined with that it attracts a certain kind of free-thinking and liberal people who get wooed in and enable it all. Edit: there is a Swedish documentary about one of the schools my brother went to. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14688132 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14688132
  - hamburglar 11mo ago
    All Waldorf schools aren’t created equal, but things I’ve seen are anti-vax beliefs, hard belief in mystical karmic stuff, a sort of groupthink that encourages conformity and obedience and shunning of people who question authority, and (and this one is really strange IMO) a prohibition on fantasy play among the children (eg you aren’t allowed to pretend you’re running a restaurant and your friends are guests —- for reasons of crackpottery).

mikeodds 11mo ago

I don’t think this idea is that controversial? Most (?) people would agree watching YouTube 16 hrs a day is bad, but agree there is also a benefit to some of the content available.

dredmorbius 11mo ago
It's almost as if ... being able to download specific content for offline viewing ... might be a far preferable option in terms of selection, control, and not getting sucked into an algorithmic wormhole.
- Nasrudith 11mo ago
  Or perhaps that algorithms are just a scapegoat for the ignorant and superstitious and yet another example of the oh so trendy serf mentality that takes no responsibility for their own life and its progreession.
  - dredmorbius 11mo ago
    1. Being able to specifically curate and manage content, by downloading it, is precisely the user-centric self-sovereignty which counters that serf mentality. And Google (and numerous other algorithmically-driven services) explicitly target and disable such tools where and when they can. See the ongoing war against yt-dlp, extensively discussed on HN: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=yt%2Ddlp https://hn.algolia.com/?q=yt%2Ddlp>. Not to mention the earlier youtube-dl: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=youtube-dl&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>. Another was mps-youtube, a CLI client which was hands-down the best interface YouTube ever had. Search (videos, channels), list-creation, download, and playback preferences (audio-only, which I largely prefer, full video, specified video resolution and/or audio quality, etc.), all locally managed without any obligation for a YouTube account. Of course Google killed it by way of its API key. See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36149183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36149183> and generally <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=mps-youtube%20&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>. 2. Just how much autonomy, wisdom, and ability to counter teams of highly-paid and highly-qualified attention engineers do you expect children and infants to possess? Or even their harried and distracted parents? Arguments for self-restraint against commercial addiction merchants have played poorly for well over 150 years, going back to the unregulated hawking of morphine- and cocaine-laced products, amongst others.

websiteapi 11mo ago

It’s not just about limiting - why don’t these people make it easier on the apps themselves to do it? We know why.

Waterluvian 11mo ago
YouTube Kids itself has a parental locked section where you can set a timer. The rest just don’t feel like they’re meant for kids at all. And that leaves adolescents in such a vulnerable spot.
- websiteapi 11mo ago
  The kids or non kids distinction is irrelevant. It’ll be clear once most of the world implements child block (which I personally disagree with). They’re gonna get decimated.
seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
It’s more convenient to use Apple’s parental control feature because you can set limits in one place.
- fullshark 11mo ago
  My kid found work arounds for that. For example she reset the ipad's clock to give herself more time. It really is like a drug to these children and they will lash out at you if you take it away.
  - seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
    If you are HN you know how to RTFM, I guess. The Fix: Lock it Down: Go to Settings > Screen Time. Tap Turn On Screen Time (if not already on) and set it up for your child. Tap Use Screen Time Passcode and create a passcode that the child doesn't know. Go to Content & Privacy Restrictions (under Screen Time) and turn it on. Tap Allowed Apps (to disable camera/other apps if needed) and Change Restrictions. Under Content & Privacy Restrictions, find Date & Time Changes and set it to Don't Allow Changes or Require Password.

markus_zhang 11mo ago

Just throw it out of the window. I'm not going to give my 6y son access to a smart phone until he is much older, ideally when he is in senior high school. The only issue is that his future friends may not have the same idea, so it's going to be extremely difficult when he grows older. Fortunately we have a mobile ban in the school, so at least they know this is not a good thing.

Forgeties79 11mo ago
The problem with this approach is their peers. Prohibition culture does not work if it’s so easy to access it elsewhere. My parents learned this when they tried to restrict video games strictly to the weekends when I was a kid haha! I find having conversations with parents at school and the parents of their friends leads to the best results (so far, I’ve only been at it a few years for my kiddos so we’ll see I guess longterm). If you’re all vaguely on the same page it just seems to make things a little easier. If that’s not an option, then just don’t be the first person to buy one and when all their peers start having certain technology you give them access too, but you sit down and talk to them about it or find ways to restrict the faucet. For instance, when it became clear YouTube was not going to be completely eradicated from my house, I just ripped a few videos and added them to my Plex server. They get to watch a little bit of nonsense content, but they’re not just getting flooded with more of it constantly (or ads). As a result those YT videos are just one among several things they watch. It isn’t special or all consuming. Video games have also been interesting. Most of the parents I know have, like me, adopted to use older stuff and/or just not let them get on the Internet. Ultimately at some point you have to do some combination of “controlling the faucet,” watching what your kids are watching so you know what’s going on, and ultimately educating them/giving them context to the media they are enjoying.
- markus_zhang 11mo ago
  Yeah we are doing that now. But I don’t know what to do if all his peers are on social media. I already know some of his friends have extensive screen time — their parents don’t care.

RHSman2 11mo ago

CEO of tobacco do the same. What’s your point? We sell things that are bad for humans. It’s a significant part of our global GDP

mrkramer 11mo ago

Instead of teaching kids self control they snatch stuff from them left and right.

Xiol 11mo ago
You clearly don't have children.

juujian 11mo ago

On that note, I'm happy to let my daughter play switch, because it has the best system for limiting screentime that I've see to date. I can set a limit, and then I can increase that limit for the day or lock it down again, remotely from the app. Very streamlined experience, clearly made by someone with user experience. In comparison, on iOS the system is janky and the Chromecast it's close to broken (and feels like abandonware).

piyuv 11mo ago
Switch is an overall better choice for kids anyway, lots of kid friendly high quality games and they can even get some exercise in (switch sports, warioware, fitness boxing, Mario tennis)

orochimaaru 11mo ago

Screen time features exist on most devices. Parents - please set them up. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. I limit my kids for 1/2 hr of screen time per day. I exclude apps like iMessage, phone and maps. Yeah - they do ask for more time here and there. But it’s pretty well controlled and they adjust to it

627467 11mo ago
Do you not find unrestricted iMessages to be problematic? Dont groups and content sharing in them end-up fomenting a similar doomscroll dynamic as access to other content rich apps?
- orochimaaru 11mo ago
  Not a whole lot of doomscrolling. There is more engagement - but I’ve resigned to the fact that it’s how kids communicate. For example - if they need to discuss homework or projects or even something simple as plan for boba tea. I’d rather they walk to their friends’ place. But now they make the plan and then walk to where they need to be.
eitally 11mo ago
Personally (as parent of two high schoolers) I think leaving texting unmanaged is wild. We block social media apps (Snap, IG, etc) and also regular media (YT, Netflix, Disney+, Tubi, etc). Social media because of toxic content and regular media because of distractions. We limit messaging app time to 30min/day, whether it's SMS/RCS, Whatsapp, Telegram, or something else. By far the most distracting thing for kids is persistent notifications. Snap is the worst for this, but messaging apps are a close second.
- peterbecich 11mo ago
  Great point. We need parental controls for throttling non-critical notifications. Study: Average teen received more than 200 app notifications a day https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/study-average-teen-received-more-200-app-notifications-day https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/study-average-te...

dudeinjapan 11mo ago

In other news: Philip Morris CEO limits his kids' cigarette use.

conception 11mo ago

This thread is person after person saying “oh wow, person who sells terrible thing for humanity doesn’t let their kids have unlimited access to terrible thing! It’s so obvious. This isn’t news.” The news is that the CEO of youtube is saying that Youtube is something that should be limited and he thinks harm will come to his children if he does not. This may be obvious to people on this site but a lot of normal people think it’s fine. It’s shocking as for a lot of people it’s more like “CEO of cucumber farm limits cucumbers for their child!” As that’s how Google markets youtube for kids.

dmix 11mo ago
To me it seems like basic parenting to limit access to tech. It wasn’t healthy for kids to just play video games every day for 5hrs straight after school in the 90s either. But that also doesn’t mean they should never have had a PlayStation or all gaming is bad.
- ragequittah 11mo ago
  The research on video games indicates that it tends to enhance certain skills like spatial awareness and reflex time. They're also pretty decent social / competitive outlets. The research on social media indicates that it lowers attention span and increases anxiety, depression, and anger. And my personal opinion is it's the reason we're seeing crazy things that I can't fathom happening without it like the measles resurgence. Neither should be used for 5 hours a day but the consequences don't seem comparable to me. The only place they do align is you should probably be exercising more instead.
just_once 11mo ago
Hacker News is not representative of the average person in often very bad ways.
2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo ago
It's also person after person telling people to parent harder.

andrepd 11mo ago

Dealers and dope peddlers don't get high on their own supply.

lukasm 11mo ago

how about a nighttime ban (10 p.m.–7 a.m.) for users under 18?

dmix 11mo ago
The planet doesn’t operate under the same time zone and that’d be easy to bypass. Just take your kids phone away or set up parental screen time or network controls.
SoftTalker 11mo ago
Remember when most TV stations went off the air after the late news?

oliwarner 11mo ago

This isn't hypocrisy, it's parenting. Do you think the Pfizer CEO lets their kids have unlimited Viagra? Or the Anheuser-Busch CEO's kids have unlimited Bud Light? I don't think this is the gotcha it's painted as.

dmix 11mo ago
It’s always some other persons poor kid in their imagination with bad parents. Basically the only solutions I see suggested is some world where all tech companies in multiple countries band together to ban kid/teens from the internet or that government will start aggressively controlling access to the internet. A big movement to have better education on parenting with tech and evolving via cultural changes is hard. Writing a law sounds simple.
prakashk 11mo ago
The hypocrisy is not because they are limiting access to their kids. It is because they are limiting access to their kids, while actively creating and executing algorithms to increase user engagement even to the point of making people addictive and dependent on their platforms.
- naian 11mo ago
  But that would affect their children exactly the same. It doesn't, because they do some parenting. (Or subcontract it, which is the same thing.)
floren 11mo ago
I think you'd have a stronger point if stores sold Bud Kidz, a non-alcoholic beverage with all the great Bud taste and fun mascots.
- sokoloff 11mo ago
  Indeed, the beer companies are far above having Clydesdales and puppies in their ads, or fun dog mascots like Spuds MacKenzie or Alex from Stroh's.

throwawayk7h 11mo ago

The previous CEO did the same thing.

arjie 11mo ago

I've certainly spent a lot of my life on social media - even as a child. It's just that back then the media was the forum that my friends and I ran; the other forums we talked on; and then later the video-games we played. There certainly is an increase in the amount of addictiveness now of the feed. I was always easily addicted to writing and reading a lot of online text (a lot of which was just garbage on both sides) but the habit seems stronger now. I wonder what changed. I'm trying a couple of experiments: one is to reduce engagement bait stuff by blocking users who say it; and the other is to try to end infinite-feeds. I think I have a desire to 'correct' other people and a desire to 'complete' the feed. If I can eliminate these two, I wonder if I can reduce the problem.

rdsubhas 11mo ago

The way this article is written, saying "tech boss" implies de-facto boss of the home and the child's behavior, is flat and silly. Both parents are bosses of the home. If one parent does not co-operate to limit social media — it's unlimited by default for the kid.

kelnos 11mo ago
No, in this context, "tech boss" refers to parents who are also executives of technology companies. I agree with the point you make in the rest of your post, but it feels not really relevant given your misunderstanding?

duxup 11mo ago

Truth is that NOTHING beats parental involvement. That's it. No law or tech will change that that. That CEOs recognize this should be no surprise, same goes for non CEOs.

Desafinado 11mo ago

The world is going to be underwater in a couple decades and we're fighting the world's biggest companies from eviscerating children's public education. It's not looking good. If there's any lesson to come from this (ha, learning) it's that we need to stop venerating successful business people. It turns out they're just people who like money and don't think about the consequences of their actions.

1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago

"Recommendations" should be optional. I can recall early days of "recommendation engines". Never thought it would lead to this The "algorithmic feeds" in Facebook, YouTube are greed-based No user ever asked for them. They could be optional. But they are mandatory. A significant amount of user control is transferred to the company. ByteDance took this even further, arguably it has 100% control. Now Facebook and YouTube, and others, all have some form of this, rolls, shorts, whatever What's interesting is the companies, no matter what the harm alleged to stem from the "algorithmic feeds", will not back down on "recommending" content. No compromise I think that's telling. Perhaps traffic would plummet, stock price would tank No one should be surprised by the legislation this had spurned

dubeye 11mo ago

more likely his nanny manager enforces the rule He probably also limits his kids exposure to public services

tsoukase 11mo ago

We parents are in a constant war with screen use by our children. It causes a cognitive dependence that is translated to a chemical one (dopamine etc). I don't blame the mega corps and their CEOs, they are legal money makers not cultural leaders. We are winning and losing battles everyday and that depends on factors like child temperament and age, school, peers etc. I believe my children will thank me for that later.