Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use an ipad, many other top tech CEOs agree, what say you LetsRun parents?

Why are we holding SJ up as the model for our homes? Wasn't he a bit of a hard person to get along with? Did he not, at one point in his life, vehemently deny the existence of one of his children?

Yes, sure, let's use SJ as the parenting model.

Gonzo wrote:

So Jobs was a hypocrite?

Like Madonna not letting her kid watch TV?

There's a moral there somewhere.

SJobs was a smart smart man, but a total hypocrite. He acted like he was some hippie dippy computer dude but he was just as much of a megalomaniac as the "hated" BGates.

Gates got the ultimate revenge. He lived.

tadpole wrote:

Yes, sure, let's use SJ as the parenting model.

by all accounts. Jobs a terrible parent.

and denying your kids stuff NEVER works. You give them skills to handle the real world instead of naively thinking you can control their entire lives. I fear for this generation raised by helicopter parents in this thread.

nokia2 wrote:

rojo wrote:

I personally am thinking of going back to a flip phone.

I found that it was a better solution to simply remove twitter, Facebook, and any other time suck apps that deliver short bursts of pleasure. Now I only use my smartphone for maps, to look something up when I'm out and about, and for text messages. I've removed email notifications and I'm tempted to just remove all email from the device. It has really gotten me off of my phone.

Exactly what I've done. I still have email on my phone but I don't think I'll get rid of it. I don't use it much for that anyway.

We don’t have electricity in our home. We also walk everywhere and our kids send weekly handwritten letters to their grandparents in cursive.

house rules wrote:

No electronics, including TV and movies, during school week from M-F afternoon. Electronics are allowed for brief periods (no longer than 30 mins total/day) on weekends. Movies are okay on weekends.

God what a horrid place to live. What are you Amish??

You guys walking around with a stick up her @$$ about everything. Get over yourselves.

This thread was worth the bump. Years later and this situation has only gotten worse. My kids spent most of the winter staring at various screens. It's not like I could really take them outside much anyway. Now that summer is approaching I have a real goal of getting them outside as often as possible and away from screens. I think there is something to be said for 15 minutes or so per day to get coordination and make technology intuitive, but beyond that it seems to rot the brain. They don't need to do the same thing for an hour at a time.

They probably have similar thoughts when they see you posting on letsrun

zzzzzzz wrote:

We don’t have electricity in our home. We also walk everywhere and our kids send weekly handwritten letters to their grandparents in cursive.

ohhh you're lucky! We don't even have a house! We live in a hole in the ground.

My kids’ first smartphone will be the one they buy for themselves.

Pretty sure Jamin and the other LRC trolls would be better off without so much computer time, but who would replace the legion of basement dwellers on the boards?

M.A.G.A...

Ha ha... you guys think you're teaching your kids some valuable life lesson??? The only thing you're teaching them is that you're a controlling @$$hole. I'm sure they hate you.

Steve Jobs was a Syrian Muslim born in Cupertino, California.

zohan wrote:

Ha ha... you guys think you're teaching your kids some valuable life lesson??? The only thing you're teaching them is that you're a controlling @$$hole. I'm sure they hate you.

The fact that you think withholding a smartphone from a child makes the parent a controlling @$$hole says more about you than it does anyone else.

Steve Jobs, RIP, was also known for his sociopathic traits. Good role model for you to emulate.

When they're sitting in a waiting room, waiting for an airplane, etc., books are a great device for making the time count.

The video games/phones are heavily tempting for the lazy and must be resisted. They will learn everything they need to when they want. Letting them use them is completely counter-productive, because it robs them of all the skills they'd otherwise acquire. They do no reading and learn nothing. They don't learn how to occupy themselves. What they are missing is mostly negative. Addiction to devices is a bad thing. They'll be far less likely to be addicted later, maybe a short phase rather than the fifteen years or more most kids will have of addiction by the college years.

My kids are immensely resourceful and love to read. When I'm not here, they may be allowed to play a lot more computer games and watch more videos but that's not a good thing. They become zombies. Given the chance, kids create games of their own interest, rather than being mostly passive consumers of set situations.

The addiction has grown uncontrollable for so many. In university classes, almost everyone will be texting through roll call and some will continue to text under the table during class. And they don't read even the assigned texts unless they have a reading quiz that day. Pathetic.

xcvxcvc wrote:

The addiction has grown uncontrollable for so many. In university classes, almost everyone will be texting through roll call and some will continue to text under the table during class. And they don't read even the assigned texts unless they have a reading quiz that day. Pathetic.

Yep. My sister and her husband are both so addicted to their phones that they are completely oblivious to the world around them while they stare at the screen. I recently had to chase after their 2-year-old, who had wandered out of the house and was headed toward a busy street. I caught the kid and brought him back, and neither of his parents took any notice of the entire event. They were both sitting right there glued to their phones. Once they get into whatever stupid games they're playing on their phones, they might as well be passed out with needles in their arms.