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YouTube’s cofounder and former tech chief says he doesn’t want his kids to watch only short videos on platforms like TikTok, Reels, and Shorts.
“I don’t know if I want my kids to be watching like short-form content as their only way, and they can’t be able to watch something that’s more than 15 minutes in length,” said Steve Chen in a talk with Stanford Business School that was published on Friday.
“I think TikTok is entertainment, but it’s purely entertainment,” Chen, a father of two, said. “It’s just for that moment. Just shorter form content equates to shorter attention spans.”
Chen cofounded YouTube in 2005 with colleagues he met at PayPal. He served as chief technology officer before they sold the video platform to Google in 2006. The entrepreneur has since launched several other businesses and moved to Taiwan with his family in 2019.
During the talk, Chen said he knows parents who are forcing their children to watch long-form content and not showing them videos with vibrant colors and “addictive eyeballs” because these are known to get kids hooked.
Chen suggested that platforms restrict the amount of time the apps can be accessed on a daily basis, based on different age groups.
“There’s this delicate balance between what is going to get users’ eyes and what’s going to monetize more versus what is actually useful,” he said about short-form content platforms.
Chen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Chen’s worries echo recent remarks from Sam Altman about social media.
On a podcast that aired last week, the OpenAI CEO — and new father — said he worries about the psychological impact social media platforms could have on children.
“I do have worries about kids in technology. I think this short video feed dopamine hit, it feels like it’s probably messing with kids’ brain development in a super deep way,” he said.
Academics are warning about children and scrolling, too.
Jonathan Haidt, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, told BI in January that social media apps were “severely damaging children in the Western world.”
Haidt wrote “The Anxious Generation,” in which he argued that social media and smartphones shorten young people’s attention spans.
“The decimation of human attention around the world might even be a bigger cost to humanity than the mental health and mental illness epidemic,” Haidt said.
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