Snapchat boss limits stepson’s screen time

Snapchat boss Evan Spiegel has revealed that he and his wife limit his stepson’s screen time to 90 minutes a week, saying he found time away from screens “valuable” during his own childhood.

The billionaire entrepreneur said in an interview with the Financial Times that his seven-year-old stepson with wife Miranda Kerr has his time with technology limited and that parents need to set an example for their children around phone usage.

The 28-year-old said of his own limited screen time: “I actually thought that was valuable because I spent a lot of time just building stuff and reading or whatever.”

“I think the more interesting conversation to have is really around the quality of that screen time,” he added.

Spiegel said his own parents did not let him watch TV until he was “almost a teenager”.

Social media companies have come under increased pressure to better monitor the content on their platforms and take more steps to improve user well-being when interacting with their services.

Several technology giants, most notably Apple and Google, have introduced well-being tools in the last year that enable people to set screen time limits as well as usage trackers to help identify and alter habits around device use.

At the end of a mixed year for Spiegel’s firm, Snapchat’s daily active user count recently fell by 1% in the three months up to the end of September, dropping from 188 million in the previous quarter to 186 million.

However, Spiegel said in November that he believes the social messaging app has an advantage over the likes of Facebook and Twitter because it does not include public likes or comments.

He argued that, as a result, there is less pressure to appear popular on the platform.

“I think it’s critically important for us to create ways for people to connect with their close friends and family, and to avoid the pressure of the popularity contest on social media,” he said.