Should Parents Limit How Much Time Children Spend on Tech Devices?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

Smartphones, iPads, game systems, laptops, desktops and TVs. For decades, Americans had only one or two screens in their home. Now a single household might have dozens. Are children spending too much time staring at
screens?

Should parents limit how much time children spend on technology?

In the article “Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent,” Nick Bilton writes:

When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. I was on the receiving end of a few
of those calls. But nothing shocked me more than something Mr. Jobs said to me in late 2010 after he had finished chewing me out for something I had written about an iPad shortcoming.

“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told
me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

I’m sure I responded with a gasp and dumbfounded silence. I had imagined the Jobs’s household was like a nerd’s paradise: that the walls were giant touch screens, the dining table was made from
tiles of iPads and that iPods were handed out to guests like chocolates on a pillow.

Nope, Mr. Jobs told me, not even close.

Since then, I’ve met a number of technology chief executives and venture capitalists who say similar things: they strictly limit their children’s screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights,
and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.

I was perplexed by this parenting style. After all, most parents seem to take the opposite approach, letting their children bathe in the glow of tablets, smartphones and computers, day and night.

Yet these tech C.E.O.’s seem to know something that the rest of us don’t.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— Should parents limit how much time children spend on technology? Should they set other limits on what children are allowed to do with screens? Why?

— Should parents worry about children being exposed to harmful content like pornography? Bullying from other kids? Should they be concerned about children getting addicted to their devices?

— Do your parents limit how much time you spend on tech devices? Do they set limits on the types of things you are allowed to do with screens?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons,
we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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