Apple CEO Tim Cook advises parents to limit screen time for kids

Apple CEO Tim Cook holds up an iPhone

Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook is in favour of limiting the amount of time children spend staring at screens each day. The topic of digital devices and children came up during Cook’s interview with GQ magazine, published Monday.

When the interviewer said his young child is “obsessed” with his smartphone, Tim Cook suggested that parents and guardians should set guidelines on how much time children spend on digital devices.

“Kids are born digital, they’re digital kids now,” said the CEO of iPhone maker Apple. “And it is, I think, really important to set some hard rails around it.

“We make technology to empower people to be able to do things they couldn’t do, to create things they couldn’t create, to learn things they couldn’t learn. And I mean, that’s really what drives us. We don’t want people using our phones too much. We’re not incentivized for that. We don’t want that,” he added.

Cook reiterated the importance of taking a break from screens elsewhere in the interview. He pointed out Apple’s Screen Time feature which allows users to check how much time they spend on apps, websites and more. The feature can also be used by parents to track the time their kids spend on their devices.

The CEO of Apple said that if a person is looking at screens more than they are looking at other people, they are probably doing something wrong. “My philosophy is, if you’re looking at the phone more than you’re looking in somebody’s eyes, you’re doing the wrong thing. So we do things like Screen Time. I don’t know about you, but I pretty religiously look at my report,” he said.