Apple CEO Tim Cook warned against “overuse” of technology, and said he didn’t want young members of his own family to use social media.
Cook’s comments, reported by The Guardian, were at Harlow college in England as part of a tour of Europe to support Apple’s ‘Everyone Can Code’ training curriculum.
“I’m not a person that says we’ve achieved success if you’re using [technology] all the time,” Cook said in part.
Cook doesn’t have children. But, he said, “I have a nephew that I put some boundaries on. There are some things that I won’t allow; I don’t want them on a social network.”
Cook’s comments echo growing concerns about the impacts of social networks, and technology more generally, on children and teenagers. A number of studies in 2017 showed increased levels of depression and anxiety among teens attributable to the growth of social networking.
Fortune Magazine notes Cook’s comments come from a place of relative ease. Though use of smartphones, the heart of Apple’s business, are also implicated in the so-called ‘attention economy,’ Apple doesn’t have any social media assets to speak of.
In fact, the company didn’t even have an official Twitter account until 2016, and still hasn’t used that account to tweet. Not even once.
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One Response
Unfortunately, I have seen too many children with social media on smart phones who can not seem to actually enjoy being one on one with a real person.
Being with people is real life; using social media is stupid even for adults, but to give it to children is very dangerous.