Nick Szabo  🔑

This is not a behaviour that is justifiably emulated. These people can afford to ignore all technology for the foreseeable future and are shielded by their fortunes. It is stupid to think that disconnecting kids from technology in their formative years is good because Gates does.

They're disconnecting their kids from the addictive media culture of the internet that they created and more naive parents addict their kids to. It is unlikely that they are disconnecting them from the supply side of tech, e.g. learning how to program a computer or bank online.

No, they aren't. They are inculcating them in an isolationist elitist culture and implying that the technology that often *governs* the lives of normal people—but not them—is a danger during the kids' formative years.

Most "tech", especially social media, is a danger during formative years. It teaches radically low time preference, prevents children from learning how to plan ahead & think through things. I wasn't raised that way. Nobody successful has ever been raised that way, AFAIK.

I know you are stating that "tech" is not "social media"—and that is exactly my point. The article states those kids are strictly limited from technology and "electronic devices." Poor people simply don't have the option to be luddites. Every advantage must be seized.

Letting social or mass media babysit your kids is very far from giving them an advantage, however much it may well make the parents' lives much easier.

I think maybe demanding a poor family's resources and capacity for time and attention be stretched so far is unrealistic. My only point is that what is appropriate for a billionaire family is inappropriate for a poor one—and will certainly not lead kids to being billionaires.