By India McCarty
Parents around the world hesitate to let their children online — including leaders in the tech industry.
“I have the classic Californian technology executive view of not having that much technology around for children,” Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at AI research company Anthropic, said during an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.”
He continued, “I think finding a way to budget your child’s time with technology has always been the work of parents and will continue to be.”
Clark shared that, while his children are allowed to watch age-appropriate shows like BLUEY, he does not give them “unfettered access to the YouTube algorithm,” adding, “It freaks me out.”
Related: Silicon Valley Parents Don’t Give Their Kids Screens. Should You Follow Their Example?
He’s far from the only tech and social media leader keeping their children offline.
In 2024, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival he allows his own children “just an hour and a half of screen time a week,” per Business Insider.
Meanwhile, while giving a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, YouTube co-founder Steven Chen said he also works to keep his children away from short-form content.
“Shorter-form content equates to shorter attention spans,” he told the audience.
Youtube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, agreed, telling Time, “We do limit [our children’s] time on YouTube and other platforms and other forms of media. On weekdays we tend to be more strict, on weekends we tend to be less so. We’re not perfect by any stretch.”
Last year, model Miranda Kerr revealed she and husband Evan Spiegel, founder and CEO of SnapChat, also have strict screen time rules for their children.
“My husband is very anti-screens for the young ones,” Miranda shared in an episode of “The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Show,” “because that’s the way he was raised.”
Clark made similar comments, saying, “My dad would let me play on the computer, and at some point he’d say: ‘Jack, you’ve had enough computers today. You’re getting weird.'”
He also stressed the importance of regulating AI technology — “We’re going to need to build pretty heavy parental controls into this system. We serve ages 18 and up today, but obviously, kids are smart, and they’re going to try to get onto this stuff.”
It looks like even the world’s leading minds in the world of tech and social media are concerned about the long-term effects their products can have on young people.
Read Next: Why These Tech Titans Keep Their Kids Off Screens
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