American teenagers at the moment are clocking onto social media websites prefer it’s their day job, with greater than half spending practically 5 hours per day on social platforms, in response to a 2023 Gallup ballot. They’re scrolling for a mean of 35 hours per week by hundreds of movies throughout apps like TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram and sending lots of of snaps, messages, and movies to mates—and in lots of circumstances, strangers, too.
Joe Gagliese, CEO of the social media advertising and creator company Viral Nation, noticed the writing on the wall. From his expertise within the social media sphere, alongside along with his huge private use of social media (he prefers watching YouTube over TV, which he doesn’t personal) opened his eyes to the horrors of the web and made him reluctant to let his three youngsters, ages 5, 6, and 14, to discover the digital world freely.
Gagliese’s firm works with lots of of creators who compose the very atmosphere from which he intends to protect his children from accessing. He mentioned a part of the issue is the large social media data hole that exists between children and fogeys. He thinks that if dad and mom knew what he is aware of, they’d even be cracking down on their children’ display screen time.
“These parents don’t understand that their kids sent 5,000 TikToks or snaps in the last 6 days,” Gagliese advised Fortune. “They’re oblivious to the world in which their kids are living.”
As dad and mom around the globe get up to the truth of the hazards of social media, some governments have taken steps to dam children from logging on, with Australia outright banning social media use for teenagers, and different nations, like France and Denmark, are making strikes to comply with swimsuit. That debate has made its option to the U.S., with Florida enacting a ban, and others making an attempt to impose bans, though to authorized headwinds.
Gagliese isn’t alone in his parenting practices. Different tech CEOs like Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel and YouTube’s cofounder Steve Chen are taking an identical stance as Gagliese, transferring to protect their children from the perils of the web.
His strict guidelines
For Gagliese’s children, their media weight loss program consists of extremely moderated, instructional content material that’s strictly balanced with offline actions like athletics, artwork, and enjoying exterior. He and his spouse enable his 5- and 6-year-old brief bursts of display screen time per day, about half-hour classes, to keep away from addiction-forming social media habits. He personally vets their content material, guaranteeing it’s instructional and never pure clickbait or AI slop.
That each day half hour display screen time is about two hours lower than what the common baby spends on the display screen. Youngsters aged 8 or youthful whole about 2.5 hours per day on units, in response to a 2025 Frequent Sense report. And one in 5 youngsters age 13 and underneath use social media for 4 hours or extra a day, in response to social media firm Aura.
His 14-year-old daughter’s media weight loss program can also be restricted to instructional supplies, with Gagliese allowing issues like YouTube movies for ninth grade math assist. “As a dad, I don’t feel comfortable in her level of maturity yet to let her into the wild of what social media has to offer.”
Gagliese admits his strict social media guardrails may doubtlessly render his daughter an outcast, noting that a lot of her mates are common customers of TikTok and Snapchat. However he mentioned at her age, the hazards of social media utilization far outweigh its advantages. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze,” he mentioned.
A guardian’s duty
To be clear, Gagliese doesn’t help state-sanctioned bans on social media. In spite of everything, it’s his enterprise. Actually, the CEO sees social media as an unimaginable software, if used the best manner by the best folks. He calls it illogical to position the impetus of regulation on tech firms. “Facebook’s not here to be the mom and dad,” he mentioned.
As a substitute, he mentioned that duty falls within the bucket of parental duty, and he urges different dad and mom to think about the identical guidelines he’s set in place for his children.
“We need to do better as moms and dads of getting in there and setting better boundaries and moderation,” he mentioned, “and just not letting it become a thing that’s just natural in their environment.”
