Steve Jobs never let his kids use an iPad. Bill Gates banned smartphones until age 14. Peter Thiel limits his children to 90 minutes of screen time per week - a restriction that drew audible gasps when he mentioned it at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival.
The pattern is striking. The people who built the most addictive products in human history don't want their own children anywhere near them.
"We limit how much technology our kids use at home," Jobs told the New York Times in 2010. This was the man whose company had just released the iPad - a device that would go on to be used by millions of children as a digital babysitter. His own kids? Never touched one.
This isn't about parental preferences or philosophy. It's about what Silicon Valley actually believes about their own products when the marketing stops and the quarterly earnings calls end. These founders have insider knowledge the rest of us don't: they know exactly how the dopamine loops work, where the dark patterns are hidden, and what the internal research says about long-term effects.
Evan Spiegel, who built Snapchat into a teen addiction engine, limits his own child to 1.5 hours weekly. Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, says he'd actively discourage his kids from consuming short-form content, noting that "shorter-form content equates to shorter attention spans."
The irony is almost beautiful: YouTube has spent years optimizing for shorter videos and algorithmic rabbit holes. TikTok perfected the infinite scroll. Instagram turned comparison into a daily ritual. And the people who profited from these innovations are now running the opposite experiment at home.
Recent research backs up their caution. A 2025 study of nearly 100,000 participants found that short-form video consumption correlated with measurably diminished cognitive performance and mental health across all age groups. The technology is impressive. The question is whether anyone needs it - especially children whose brains are still developing.
Some countries aren't waiting for parental discretion. Australia and Malaysia became the first nations to ban social media for users under 16, with France, Denmark, and the UK considering similar legislation.
But here's what bothers me: if these products are safe enough to market to the world's children, why aren't they safe enough for the children of the people who built them? The hypocrisy isn't just striking - it's a tell.
When Elon Musk, who owns a social platform, admits it "might've been a mistake" to give his kids unrestricted access, that's not a parenting confession. That's a product admission.
The technology works exactly as designed. These billionaires know it. And they're protecting their kids from it.
