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

Lots of normal people don't think it's fine.

Lots of parents limited their kids' TV (television, you know) time back in the day (mine sure did, thanks mum and dad, even though I didn't particularly approve of the restriction back then).

Now you have to limit smartphone (and tablet and PC and TV) time. Lots of parents do this already, CEOs are not alone.

The television set was never in every kids pocket, though. And obviously "lol don't buy your kid a smartphone then lol". sure, easy to say, but the world is getting more and more connected.

Availability is definitely a factor, but I feel that a far more important aspect is that a YouTube feel is personalised. It's A/B testing you for weeks on end, and has a pretty good idea of how to get maximum engagement. TV was never this targeted, nor was there feedback to ratchet up what it suggested to you.

Plus a lot of the times there was nothing interesting to watch on TV even if you did have it in front of you.

Kids don’t stand a chance against decades of data/research and billions of dollars weaponized against human psychology to garner as much of your attention as possible at all times.

By our generations “best and brightest”, supposedly.

At least, most well compensated.

Shame on you, if you work for these organisations.

Kids should own a device with "adult" bit set to 0, so that they can only use government-approved applications and sites. Why government? Because parents are too lazy or dumb to configure anything and 90% will just let their children access whatever they want and the rest 10% will feel like losers who cannot watch the things all their classmates are allowed to watch.

What happens when the kid eventually becomes an adult? They have to buy a new device? That seems like an really great way to create a bunch of unnecessary e-waste.

Also, letting Big Daddy Government control what we show the kids has got to be one of the worst ideas I've heard. Propaganda machines that parents have no power over? No thanks. That seems like the most likely outcome of this sort of measure. Next thing you know, every computer will also have a "activist" and "journalist" bit; once you normalize role-based access controls, the catgories will only ever expand.

Ehhh I’m more of a “hybrid model” guy myself. I do think the government should be more involved in regulating what these companies can do to us and how they can use our data, but I’m not really in to your vision of how involved they are in apps directly (imagine that kind of power with the Trump administration).

Meanwhile I do think parents should not be expected to literally handle every element of this because it’s just not possible to have eyes on every bit of media/entertainment/etc our kids can find. That being said it is our responsibility to educate our kids on some level, so we can’t just expect to pass the buck entirely to external systems. I do think it’s reasonable to expect some basic guardrails though.

Needs to be a little bit of effort and restriction across the board.

What is a better way to get your kids to behave than to let them scroll TikTok with headphones on for hours? Phone is a babysitter nowadays.