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These days, parenting means navigating a seemingly endless parade of decisions about technology. Can your toddler watch "Sesame Street" on an iPad? Does FaceTiming the grandparents count toward screen time? Should your teen have access to social media just because "everyone else" seems to?Parents are more cognizant than ever about the pitfalls — and potential — of technology, so it's natural to wonder how the people leading tech companies handle this with their own kids.
Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel have both said they limit their young children to an hour and a half of screen time per week. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said that he wants his kids to use screens for communication, not passive consumption.It turns out, tech leaders, for the most part, are like the rest of us: trying to balance screen-free time and critical thinking skills, while also giving their kids access to the world that technology can unlock.Here's how seven tech leaders are handling technology decisions for their families.Kate Doerksen is the co-founder and CEO of Sage Haven, an app that helps parents monitor their kids' messaging. Her kids, who are 7 and 9, get an hour per day on their iPads or Nintendo Switch, plus additional time if the family is playing a video game together. She plans to delay smartphones and social media, but her daughter has an Apple Watch with messenger ."Like most things in life, the right answer feels like it lies somewhere in the middle," Doerksen says. "It's not tech abstinence, and it's not unlimited, unfettered usage. It's moderate usage on non-addictive apps and games with boundaries."As the chief learning officer at the online education company Stride, Niyoka McCoy, sees tech as a normal part of life, but she's still intentional about how her children — who are 14 and 2 — use it."We believe technology should be a tool for learning and creativity first, and entertainment second," she says. Her kids don't have hard-and-fast screen time limits, but McCoy aims to avoid them passively consuming content."When kids spend too much time scrolling or watching instead of creating, learning, or building something meaningful," she says, "that is when technology stops being beneficial."Three years ago, Hari Ravichandran's daughter, who was then 13, went through a tough time — one that he believes her access to a smartphone contributed to. He had given her a phone at 13, but now believes that was too young, so he decided to take the phone away and delay access until 15 or 16 for her as well as his three younger children."I knew we couldn't just send her back into the same digital environment that had amplified those issues," said Ravichandran, the founder and CEO of online security company Aura.At the same time, "What I think is overblown is the idea that technology itself is the enemy," Ravichandran says. "Cutting it out completely doesn't solve the root problem and can actually limit kids' independence and digital literacy."Today, he focuses on how technology impacts his children's mood, sleep, self-esteem, and overall well-being."For us, it's less about strict bans and more about awareness, accountability, and open dialogue," he says.Tim Sheehan, co-founder and CEO Greenlight — which provides debit cards for children and teens — gave his four kids access to smartphones at 12, and social media at 15. His kids now range in age from 17 to 26. When they were younger, he watched their tech consumption closely, knowing how impressionable they were."My goal is to make sure the outside influences in their lives support the values we're trying to instill," he says.Justice Eroline, chief technology officer at the software development firm BairesDev, has a blanket rule of 1 hour of screen time for his kids, who are 8, 10, and 12. Even within that, he pays close attention to the type of content they're watching."I don't allow short-form content for the kids as it affects their attention span," he says.Ahu Chhapgar, chief technology officer at fintech company Paysafe and dad of two , says short-form video worries him more than anything else."When kids get access to it, they almost enter a trance," he says. "That level of stimulus is not how the brain evolved to process information, and I do worry about long-term effects on attention and impulse control."Unlike some parents, Eroline is much less concerned about gaming."Video games can teach kids a lot of different things: teamwork, reaction time, problem solving, grit, dealing with defeat," Eroline says. "The content of the video game might be questionable, but there are plenty that can work for different age ranges."Chhapgar won't let his kids have access to smartphones until they're 14, and social media until they're 16, but he does encourage them to use ChatGPT for 20 minutes each day."No one has all the answers about AI yet," he says. "So I'd rather they explore, build, and experiment responsibly instead of just passively consuming technology."Nik Kale, principal engineer with Cisco Systems, makes sure that his 3-year-old isn't given a screen when she's upset."I don't want her building a dependency where the first response to discomfort is a device," he explains.He also ensures that he or his wife — not an algorithm — are choosing what their daughter sees."I don't let automated systems make unsupervised decisions in my production environments at work," he says. "I'm not going to let one make unsupervised decisions about what my three-year-old's brain consumes either."That, to him, is much more important than seemingly arbitrary screen time limits."Parents are adding up minutes like it's a toxicity dosage," he says, "when the real variable is whether a human or an algorithm is driving the experience."
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