YouTube cofounder Steve Chen prefers his children avoid TikTok-style videos

Steve Chen co-founded YouTube in 2005 along with former PayPal colleagues and served as chief technology officer until the platform was acquired by Google in 2006. He later launched other startups and moved to Taiwan with his family in 2019.

Chen criticized the growing influence of TikTok-style content during a recent talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in the U.S., Business Insider reported.

"I think TikTok is entertainment, but it’s purely entertainment. It’s just for that moment. Just shorter-form content equates to shorter attention spans."

Steve Chen, former cofounder of Youtube. Photo by Business Next

Chen, a father of two, says if his kids consume only short-form content, it could leave them unable to focus on videos longer than 15 minutes. He knows some parents who intentionally have their children watch longer videos without flashy visuals, an approach he believes to be effective.

He also suggests platforms should limit how much time kids can spend on apps each day, depending on their age.

Chen joins other tech leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Tesla’s Elon Musk in raising concerns about how social media affects kids.

According to Fortune magazine, Altman pointed to endless scrolling and the "dopamine hit" of short videos as likely causing serious harm to children’s brain development in an interview on the This Past Weekend podcast.

Altman said that as kids grow up surrounded by advanced tech like AI, they would never be smarter than the tools around them, and never experience a world where products and services are less intelligent than they are. He warned that this reality would fundamentally change how education works.

Musk, also owner of the social platform X, had claimed in 2023 that he did not place any restrictions on his children's use of social media, something he now sees as a possible mistake.

He urged parents to be more involved in what their kids are watching, warning that social media algorithms are shaping their thinking.