Here’s how much screen time tech billionaire Peter Thiel allows his kids in a week

Peter Thiel

PayPal co-founder and tech billionaire Peter Thiel doesn’t allow his kids to stay glued to the screen for long. In a conversation with The New York Times columnist/editor and SquawkCNBC co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, Thiel revealed that he allows his children (aged 3 and 5) an hour and a half of screen time per week.

On being asked about US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s announcement that his office would push for labels on social media warning about the health issues these platforms can create in kids, the billionaire investor said: “The place where I always push back on is that I feel it is too easy to turn tech or social media companies into the scapegoat for all our problems. And, so, yes, there is probably– there is some kind of an interesting critique one can make of the tech companies and if you ask how many of the executives in those companies, how much screen time do they let their kids use and there is probably, sort of an interesting critique one could make…”

Here, Sorkin interrupts and asks him: "What do you do"?

Thiel: "Not very much".

Sorkin: "What’s not very much"?

Thiel: "An hour and a half a week".

Peter Thiel joins the list of well-known names in the tech industry who have curtailed screen time for their kids, including Sundar Pichai, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

In a 2011 interview with The New York Times, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs revealed that he hadn’t allowed his kids to use the then-newly launched iPad. "We limit how much technology our kids use at home," Jobs had said in the interview with Nick Bolton.

In an interview with the Mirror, Bill Gates had also revealed that he didn’t allow his kids to have smartphones until they reached the age of 14.