[TaupeRanger]

It tells us nothing. People act like this is some big hypocrisy or revelation. First of all, Jobs DID allow his children to use iPads, but it was limited. People take a single quote from the Isaacson biography out of context, assuming that he never let his children have access to iPads at all, forever. Other interviews he gave talked about limiting access - like ALL families should do.

Jobs was literally just parenting. Limiting screen time is something all parents should do. We also limit access to sugary foods and other things that can be damaging in excess. Calling tech executives hypocrites for having common sense parenting limits is not really a dunk.

[hbn]

Not to mention the iPad was only on the market for a year and a half before Jobs passed, in which there was no time for real educational software with traction to make it into schools.

He was talking about a future he was aiming for. I know it's hard to remember the tech optimism we still had heading into 2010, but most people still viewed things as getting better at that time. When Jobs announced the iPad, the iPhone had been on the market for 2.5 years and we basically only saw the conveniences of how cool it was to be able to check Facebook on the go with a cool futuristic touchscreen experience.

It's really easy to see how misguided Jobs was with 15 years of hindsight.

[yodsanklai]

> We also limit access to sugary foods and other things that can be damaging in excess.

Maybe you do, but not everybody does. 19.7% of American kids are obese. The hypocrisy is that tech executives promote and lobby for excessive use of their products (even manufacturing addiction), but know better for their kids.

[dominotw]

atlest buffet himself drank 6 cans of coke per day being a big investor in coke.

[mentalgear]

If the fact that these CEOs responsible for propagating disruptive technologies - CEOs exposed to the effects every day, have unprecedented insights (internal analytics) and the best staff around them to assess the tech's potential positive and negative consequences - DO NOT want to their own to partake in it even though advertising it to anyone else, then - if that tells you nothing - you are just plain ignorant or vested in their companies.

[red-iron-pine]

a non-trivial number of HN is, in fact, literally (in)vested in their companies.

lotta folks here with FAANG pedigrees...

[tshaddox]

Except that the supposed views held by these CEOs (iPads, social media, AI, etc. can be bad for kids) are also widely held mainstream views. That's the only reason people are bringing the views up here...because they already agree with them!

There's absolutely nothing insightful about CEOs with "unprecedented insights" coming to the same conclusions as everyone else.

[shimman]

Is this the same Jobs that famously denied paternity of his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, and was only forced to accept her as his daughter when a US federal court forced a DNA test on him proving she was in fact his daughter?

Yeah, something tells me we shouldn't be taking advice regarding children from this man.

[rfrey]

Tobacco executives probably prevented their children from smoking, especially as evidence emerged. That's just parenting.

It doesn't forgive them for lobbying ferociously against any regulation of marketing to children.

[Ajedi32]

This meme where people liken electronics with tobacco is foolish. Smoking is physically harmful in any significant dose. Screens are perfectly fine in moderation and can even be beneficial when used correctly.

[muskyFelon]

Its a luxury that affluent people have to limit these things. When you're at your limit after a long day of work and still have stuff to do at home the kid gets the phone, iPad, or whatever while parents do the needed to run the household. Wonder why obesity is such a problem for poorer families. Convenience.

Yes, tech companies are liable for pushing this technology that they know to be addictive.

There is no apologist revisionist history for billionaires that are actively making the world a worse place. People act like Jobs was some kind of hero. Dude was a snake. Made some damn good products, but you don't achieve that level of wealth by being a kind person.

[arjie]

> Wonder why obesity is such a problem for poorer families. Convenience.

Assuming this were to be the case, one would need to explain why this doesn't happen to men.

> Among men, the prevalence of obesity was lower in both the lowest (31.5%) and highest (32.6%) income groups compared with the middle-income group (38.5%).

And among women, one would need to explain why it doesn't happen to Black women.

> Among non-Hispanic black women, there was no difference in obesity prevalence among the income groups.

It also needs to explain why no statistically significant result happens for Asian women

> Among women, prevalence was lower in the highest income group (29.7%) than in the middle (42.9%) and lowest (45.2%) income groups. This pattern was observed among non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Asian, and Hispanic women, but it was only significant for white women.

Without looking deeper into the issue, the natural thing the income vs. obesity thing overall shows is a population blend issue (Simpson's paradox). It gets too tortured otherwise: yeah, Black women always have inconvenience, Asian women mostly don't have more convenient lives as they become richer, and White women get massively more convenient lives as they get wealthier. Men until 2008 got less convenient lives as they got wealthier and then their lives got neither more convenient nor less convenient but stayed the same.

That's pretty rough number of epicycles to stick into this convenience angle.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6650a1.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db50.htm

[graemep]

So how did people manage before we had these things?

[red-iron-pine]

bible study and alcoholism

[gjadi]

Well, it does tell us something if they limit screen time like they limit sugar but don't limit book time.

I'm sure almost no family have an upper limit on book time.

Thus aiming for screens the replace books is a bad aim.