- YouTube cofounder Steve Chen is one of the latest tech trailblazers to warn about social media’s impact on kids. Chen noted in a talk that short-form video “equates to shorter attention spans” and said he wouldn’t want his own kids to exclusively consume this type of content. Companies that distribute short-form video (which includes the company he cofounded, YouTube) should add safeguards for younger users, he added.
A YouTube cofounder who helped pave the way for our modern, content-obsessed world has come out against short-form videos because of their effect on kids.
Steve Chen, who served as YouTube’s chief technology officer before it was acquired by Google in 2006, railed against the TikTok-ification of online life in a talk last year at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“I think TikTok is entertainment, but it’s purely entertainment,” Chen said during the talk, which was published on YouTube. “It’s just for that moment. Just shorter-form content equates to shorter attention spans.”
Chen, who has two children with wife, Jamie Chen, said he wouldn’t want his kids only consuming short-form content, and then not be able to watch something longer than 15 minutes. He said he knows of other parents who force their kids to watch longer videos without the eye-catching colors and gimmicks that hook especially younger users. This strategy works well, he claims.
“If they don’t get exposure to the short-form content right away, then they’re still happy with that other type of content that they’re watching,” he said.
Many companies have had to rush to offer short-form content after the rise of TikTok, he said, but these companies now have to balance their motivations for monetization and attracting users’ attention with content that’s “actually useful.”
Companies that distribute short-form video, which includes his former company YouTube, could face problems with addictiveness. These companies should add safeguards for kids on short-form content, such as age restrictions for apps and limits on the amount of time some users can use them, he said.
The science seems to back up Chen’s opinion. Over the past few years, several studies have shown a mental health and attention problems are correlated with short-form video watching. A 20-year-old plaintiff has also taken Meta, the world’s biggest social media company, and other companies to court over accusations that she became addicted to their products leading to mental health problems.
Chen joins fellow tech trailblazers in sounding the alarm about social media’s impact on children, including early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Tesla’s Elon Musk. In a podcast interview, Altman specifically called out social media scrolling and the “dopamine hit” of short-form video for “probably messing with kids’ brain development in a super deep way.” Meanwhile, Thiel said he only allows his children to use screens for an hour-and-a-half per week.
Musk, who owns the social network X (né Twitter), said in 2023 he doesn’t have any restrictions on social media use for his children, but added this “might have been a mistake,” and encouraged parents to take a more active role in their kids’ social media habits.
“I think, probably, I would limit social media a bit more than I have in the past and just take note of what they’re watching, because I think at this point they’re being programmed by some social media algorithms, which you may or may not agree with,” Musk said.
A version of this story originally published at Fortune.com on July 29, 2025.
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