Reading Summary For Child Development In Media

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs raised their kids with limited tech — and it should have been a red flag about our own smartphone use

Psychologists are learning how dangerous

smartphones can be for teenage brains.

The World Health Organization recently advised parents to ​limit screentime to just one hour a

day​ for children under five. Though ​one large study​ found little correlation between screen-time

and mental health impacts, other research has found that an eighth-grader’s risk for depression

jumps 27%​ when he or she frequently uses social media.

But the writing about smartphone risk might have been on the wall for roughly a decade,

according to educators Joe Clement and Matt Miles, co-authors of the book ​”Screen Schooled:

Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse is Making Our Kids Dumber.”

It should be telling, Clement and Miles argue, that the two biggest tech figures in recent history

— Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — seldom let their kids play with the very products they helped

create.

“What is it these wealthy tech executives know about their own products that their consumers

don’t?” the authors wrote.

Here’s how Silicon Valley elites limit screentime for their own kids, despite helping sell tech to

children across the world:

Bill Gates, one of the most influential tech leaders in the world, limited how much technology his children could use at home.

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In 2007, Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft, implemented a cap on screen time when his

daughter started developing an unhealthy attachment to a video game. He also didn’t let his kids

get cell phones until they turned 14.

Other techies, like Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, limit their kids’ screen time.

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Spiegel and his wife Miranda Kerr impose an hour and a half of screen time per week on their

kids, he ​told the Financial Times​. Young people use Snapchat more often than any other social

media platform, according to a ​2018 Pew Research Center survey​.

Plus, current Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have ​spoken out against

tech overuse​ among children.

Despite the fact he created the iPad, Steve Jobs wouldn’t let his kids use it.

AP

Jobs, who was the CEO of Apple until his death in 2012, ​revealed in a 2011 New York Times

interview​ that he prohibited his kids from using the newly-released iPad. “We limit how much

technology our kids use at home,” Jobs told reporter Nick Bilton.

In ​an recent interview​ on Cheddar, iPod co-creator Tony Fadell speculated that if Steve Jobs

were alive today, he’d want to address growing societal concerns about tech addiction. “He’d say,

‘Hey we need to do something about it,'” Fadell said.

The CEO of Google’s parent company, Sundar Pichai, limits the time his kids spend watching TV.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during the Google I/O keynote session at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on May 7, 2019. ​JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

Pichai told the New York Times​ in a 2018 interview that his then-11-year-old son did not have a

cell phone, and that he limits the time his children spend watching television.

Even elite Silicon Valley schools are noticeably low-tech.

Barbara Munker/picture alliance via Getty Images

That’s at the average school at least, according to the coauthors. A number of specialty Silicon

Valley schools, such as the Waldorf School in Mountain View, are noticeably low-tech. They use

chalkboards and No. 2 pencils. Instead of learning how to code, kids are taught the soft skills of

cooperation and respect.

At Brightworks School in San Francisco, ​kids learn creativity​ by building things and attending

classes in treehouses.

Some low-income schools, meanwhile, have increased their tech usage to help solve for ​teacher

shortage problems​. Parents said a Mark Zuckerberg-funded web-based teaching platform

caused physical and mental ailments, ​The New York Times​ reported.

Read more: ​Parents say a learning app backed by Mark Zuckerberg is giving kids anxiety and

headaches, raising concerns about the amount of time students spend staring at screens

Despite barring his own kids from using too much tech, some experts say Gates touts the use of electronic devices in schools.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

If there is any concession Gates has made on technology, it’s in the benefits it offers students in

certain educational settings. In the years since Gates implemented his household policy, the

billionaire philanthropist has taken a keen interest in personalized education, an approach that

uses electronic devices to help tailor lesson plans for each student.

In a recent blog post, Gates celebrated Summit Sierra, a Seattle-based school that takes students’

personal goals — like getting into a specific college — and devises a path to get there. Teachers in

personalized learning settings take on more of a coaching role, helping to nudge students back

on track when they get stuck or distracted.

Technology in these cases is being used as specifically as possible — and in ways Gates

recognizes as useful for a student’s development, not as entertainment.

“Personalized learning won’t be a cure-all,” he wrote. But Gates said he’s “hopeful that this

approach could help many more young people make the most of their talents.”

Authors Clement and Miles make the case that while Silicon Valley elites have made a profit off of selling tech to kids, they recognize how addictive and harmful these products can be.

woodpencil/Shutterstock

In “Screen Schooled,” Clement and Miles make the case that wealthy Silicon Valley parents seem

to grasp the addictive powers of smartphones, tablets, and computers more than the general

public does — despite the fact that these parents often make a living by creating and investing in

that technology.

“It’s interesting to think that in a modern public school, where kids are being required to use

electronic devices like iPads,” the authors wrote, “Steve Jobs’s kids would be some of the only

kids opted out.”

Jobs’ children have finished school, so it’s impossible to know how the late Apple cofounder

would have responded to education technology, or “edtech.” But Clement and Miles suggest that

if Jobs’ kids had attended the average US school today, they’d have used tech in the classroom

far more than they did at home while growing up.

Chris Weller contributed to a previous version of this article.