Every few months, a batch of articles about screen time makes the rounds in the parenting biosphere. The stories center around how prominent geeks have a low-tech policy when parenting their own kids. Steve Jobs’ kids never owned an iPad. Bill Gates’ kids don’t have mobile phones, but pine for the latest iPhone. Mark Zuckerberg hopes his newborn child will spend more time outdoors.
I have an incredible problem with the way these stories are co-opted by the media and technophobes. This parenting angle is riddled with so many assumptions about who these men (and its usually the fellows…) are as technologists in relation to being a father.
Do they have some clandestine insight into the addictive nature of these tools and would they therefore not allow their own children to touch the screens?
This idea promotes the notion that these iconic innovators brew some dope tech in a secret lab a la Walter White to peddle on the street to us unsuspecting folk. “Say my name!”
I suspect that when Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg started their fortune finding companies they didn’t fear screentime for the world’s children.
They were chasing a big idea that centered on their time WITH screens.
They saw a change on the horizon and knew, by instinct, that technology was causing these tremors underground. They chased it.
Their passion (or was it an addiction? 😉 motivated them to keep going at this big idea, no matter how daunting.
I doubt that Bill Gates Sr was discouraging Bill Jrs’ curious mind when his son brought home a rickety modem from school and taught himself how to code it. When these guys talk about limiting their screens in their current homes, I believe they’re more likely speaking of preserving a family connection that moves beyond their inventions. Ironically, this is the same ideal that Bill Gates Sr speaks to when he said that he banned books at the dinner table, something that Senior says was key to helping Junior become a billionaire.
If you read through the discussion threads, many disagree with these news stories because they don’t believe these individuals should be propped up as parenting models. Personally, I don’t have an issue with that. I’m interested in how they parent given who they are.
I want to know their perspective AS parents, just like I hope you care about how an ex-EA exec/ stay-at-home mom thinks about screentime. 😉
I’m more fascinated about their childhood because I feel THAT it informs their parenting as a component of their personal success versus what they’re doing now as parents themselves. What I have extracted from their history is that each of these men were once boys whose curiosities, idiosyncrasies, and restlessness were tolerated, encouraged, and eventually understood by their parents so that it could evolve.
Each of their parents tells an anecdote – Mark’s first messaging system entitled the Zucknet, Bill’s high school scheduling for tinder hack – with proud retrospection about how childhood behavior contributed to a larger question that fundamentally informed the development of their technological ingenuity.
Ultimately, I don’t care about how Steve Jobs raised his kids. I don’t want to raise Steve Job’s kid, I want to raise the next Steve Jobs.
