Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube speaks throughout a panel for the Summit for Democracy on March 30, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Pictures
YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan is the newest in a line of tech bosses who’ve admitted to limiting their kids’s social media use, because the harms of being on-line for younger folks have turn out to be extra evident.
Mohan, who took the helm of YouTube’s management in 2023, was simply named Time’s 2025 CEO of the Yr. He mentioned in an interview with the journal that his kids’s use of media platforms is managed and restricted.
“We do restrict their time on YouTube and different platforms and different types of media. On weekdays we are usually extra strict, on weekends we are usually much less so. We’re not excellent by any stretch,” Mohan mentioned in a single TikTok video posted by Time Journal on Thursday.
He confused “every part moderately” is what works greatest for him and his spouse, and that extends to different on-line companies and platforms. Mohan has three kids: two sons and one daughter.
Specialists have continued to sound the alarm on how extreme smartphones and social media use has harmed kids and youngsters. Jonathan Haidt, NYU professor and creator of “The Anxious Technology,” has advocated for kids to not have smartphones earlier than the age of 14 and no entry to social media earlier than the age of 16.
“Allow them to have a flip telephone, however bear in mind, a smartphone is not actually a telephone. They might make telephone calls on it, nevertheless it’s a multi-purpose machine by which the world can get to your kids,” Haidt mentioned in an interview with CNBC’s Tania Bryer earlier this 12 months.
This week, Australia grew to become the primary nation to formally bar customers below the age of 16 from accessing main social media platforms. Forward of the laws’s passage final 12 months, a YouGov survey discovered that 77% of Australians backed the under-16 social media ban. Nonetheless, the rollout has confronted some resistance since turning into regulation.
Mohan mentioned in a extra intensive interview with Time on Wednesday that he feels a “paramount accountability” to younger folks and giving mother and father higher management over how their children use the platform. YouTube Youngsters was launched in 2015 as a child-friendly model of the Google-owned platform.
He mentioned his purpose is “to make it simple for all mother and father” to handle their kids’s YouTube use “in a approach that’s appropriate to their family,” particularly as each mother or father has a special method.
Invoice Gates, Mark Cuban
A number of tech bosses have taken the same method. YouTube’s former CEO Susan Wojcicki, additionally barred her kids from looking movies on the app, until they have been utilizing YouTube Youngsters. She additionally restricted the period of time they spent on the platform.
“I permit my youthful children to make use of YouTube Youngsters, however I restrict the period of time that they are on it,” Wojcicki informed CNBC in 2019. “I feel an excessive amount of of something is just not a superb factor.”
Invoice Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, is amongst the tech titans who’re towards permitting younger folks an excessive amount of display time. With three kids, now adults, Gates brazenly talked about not giving them cell telephones till they have been of their teenagers.
“We do not have cell telephones on the desk once we are having a meal, we did not give our children cell telephones till they have been 14 and so they complained different children bought them earlier,” Gates mentioned years in the past.
In the meantime, billionaire Mark Cuban would even resort to putting in Cisco routers and utilizing administration software program to watch which apps his kids have been on and shut off their telephone exercise.