Is it a good thing to limit screen time for kids?

Tech lords often argue that limiting screen culture is especially bad for at-risk young people

If you have a think email folder full of URLs about the screen-culture wars, you probably have a copy of some kind of essay that includes the following information or variations on it.

Yes, these clips involve names such as “Steve Jobs” and “Bill Gates.”

Here is a classic example, drawn from a must-file After Babel feature — by Zach Rausch, Jon Haidt and Lennon Torres — with this double-decker headline:

The Worst Argument That Social-Media Companies Use to Defend Themselves

Why are tech leaders so adamant about pushing their creations on other people’s kids, while protecting their own?

Yes, note the second half of that headline. Now read this shot across the bow of Big Tech:

One technique for determining whether a product harms children is to ask the people who designed that product if they let their kids use it. 

Steve Jobs limited his children’s use of technology. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew doesn’t let his children on TikTok. Bill Gates restricted his kids’ screen time and did not give them a phone until they were 14. Google CEO Sundar Pichai didn’t give his 11-year-old a phone. Mark Zuckerberg has carefully monitored his kids’ screen time and avoided sharing identifying photos of them on Instagram. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel limited his 7-year-old’s technology use to 90 minutes a week. (Compare that with the average American teen, who spends nearly nine hours a day on screens, not including for school or homework.) 

The examples continue: Some tech executives write up “nanny contracts,” compelling babysitters to keep their children away from screens. Many of them pay more than $35,000 a year to send their kids to the Waldorf School of the Peninsula — a few miles down the road from Meta’s and Google’s headquarters — which doesn’t allow children to use screens until seventh or eighth grade.

“Nanny contracts”? As in rules for thee, but not for me?