Peter Thiel and other tech billionaires are publicly shielding their children from the products that made them rich

See, this shit right here tells you exactly what's going on.  They know
this shit is harmful and addictive and they don't care.  More than that,
they want your children to become addicted to it, both to make the masses
more pliable and easy to control, and because they're getting rich from it.

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Despite building an increasingly screen-focused world, billionaire tech
leaders are keeping their own children away from the tech they helped
create.

As far back as 2010, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs told a New York
Times reporter his kids had never used an iPad and that, “We limit how much
technology our kids use at home.” 

Since then, the trend of Silicon Valley billionaires keeping their families
away from technology has become even more pronounced, thanks in part to the
rise of social media and short-form video. 

Excessive device use among children has grown more common in recent years
as busy parents turn to screens to find some peace. The trend has
accelerated so much that some young children accustomed to extensive screen
time are dubbed “iPad kids.” On average, children in the U.S. ages 8 to 18
spend 7.5 hours per day watching or using screens, according to the
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

YouTube cofounder Steve Chen said at a talk at the Stanford Graduate School
of Business last year that he wouldn’t want his kids consuming only
short-form content, noting that it might be better to limit kids to videos
longer than 15 minutes.

“Shorter-form content equates to shorter attention spans,” he said.

At the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, early Facebook investor and billionaire
Peter Thiel joined Chen among the ranks of tech leaders who are setting
strict limits on screens. Thiel said he lets his two young children use
screens for only an hour and a half per week, a revelation that prompted
audible gasps from the audience.

Other tech CEOs, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and
Tesla’s Elon Musk, have also spoken about limiting their children’s access
to devices. Gates has said he did not give his children smartphones until
age 14 and banned phones at the dinner table entirely. Snap CEO Spiegel, in
2018, said he limits his child to the same 1.5 hours per week of screen
time as Thiel....

Scientific research backs up their parenting instincts. A 2025 study of
nearly 100,000 people found that short-form video use was consistently
associated with poorer cognition and a decline in many aspects of mental
health across both younger and older social media users....

And yet, far from being a new phenomenon, the idea that social media use is
harmful for young people has been around for years. Still, it’s the tech
leaders who created the attention economy who have been the most attentive
to this fact. 

To be sure, several social media CEOs have publicly pushed back on claims
that their platforms are harmful. Instagram chief Adam
Mosseri testified earlier this month in the trial against its parent
company, Meta, that overuse of social media does not constitute “clinical
addiction.” Meta’s lawyers during the trial also outlined a range of safety
features Instagram has introduced for younger users, including limits on
the visibility of adult content and muted notifications at night.

Yet as the trials against social media companies continue and country after
country moves toward legislating what Silicon Valley billionaires have
quietly practiced for years, the private behavior of the world’s most
powerful tech figures stands in contrast to what they’re promoting and
building. 

https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/peter-thiel-bill-gates-steve-jobs-steve-chen-tech-billionaires-publicly-shielding-their-children-from-tech-products-social-media/

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