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

(www.cnbc.com)
209 points pseudolus | 3 comments | 13 Dec 25 12:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.238s | source
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pj_mukh ◴[13 Dec 25 12:54 UTC] No.46254203[source]▶
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Pooge ◴[13 Dec 25 13:30 UTC] No.46254386[source]▶
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.
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Thorrez ◴[13 Dec 25 13:58 UTC] No.46254533[source]▶
>“We do limit their 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,”

>He stressed “everything in moderation” is what works best for him and his wife, and that extends to other online services and platforms.

>YouTube’s former CEO Susan Wojcicki, also barred her children from browsing videos on the app, unless they were using YouTube Kids. She also limited the amount of time they spent on the platform.

So they're not completely banning their kids from using YouTube. The current YouTube CEO uses a time limit. The previous YouTube CEO uses a time limit and limits usage to the YouTube Kids app.

Disclosure: I work at Google but not on YouTube.

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1. ViktorRay ◴[13 Dec 25 15:52 UTC] No.46255431[source]▶
The issue is that the business models of these platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, tik tok) are based on maximizing engagement. And maximizing engagement in this context means spending ever increased amounts of time on one platform over another or over doing offline activities like reading a book and going outside.

So the tech leaders preach moderation but the design of all these apps are built to be addictive and to maximize the time that other people and other people’s kids spend on it. It seems to be poor kids who have overworked stressed parents who seem to spend the largest chuck of time endlessly scrolling on these apps harming their minds and mental health and so on

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2. dmix ◴[13 Dec 25 16:18 UTC] No.46255642[source]▶
That’s because internet addiction isn’t sufficiently taken seriously as a society, even for adults. We haven’t fully adapted properly to this reality on a social level because it’s very new so people are panicking. It will eventually become standard parenting and as far as I can tell it already is becoming standard. More adults need to look at their own behaviour to fix their kids.

Every cellphone already comes with the ability to limit those things. It doesn’t require coming home from work early to toggle parental controls at a certain time.

3. Thorrez ◴[14 Dec 25 14:08 UTC] No.46263081[source]▶
YouTube Kids has a built-in timer to limit the amount of time kids can watch.

https://www.youtube.com/intl/ALL_us/kids/parent-resources/