![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/J-G-.jpg?w=2048\")
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American teens today are clocking onto social media sites like it\u2019s their day job, with more than half spending nearly five hours per day on social platforms, according to a 2023 Gallup poll. They\u2019re scrolling for an average of 35 hours per week through thousands of videos across apps like TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram and sending hundreds of snaps, messages, and videos to friends\u2014and in many cases, strangers, too.<\/p>\n
Joe Gagliese, CEO of the social media marketing and creator agency Viral Nation, saw the writing on the wall. From his experience in the social media sphere, along with his vast personal use of social media (he prefers watching YouTube over TV, which he doesn\u2019t own) opened his eyes to the horrors of the internet and made him reluctant to let his three children, ages 5, 6, and 14, to explore the digital world freely.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gagliese\u2019s company works with hundreds of creators who compose the very environment from which he intends to shield his kids from accessing. He said part of the problem is the massive social media knowledge gap that exists between kids and parents. He thinks that if parents knew what he knows, they\u2019d also be cracking down on their kids\u2019 screen time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese parents don\u2019t understand that their kids sent 5,000 TikToks or snaps in the last 6 days,\u201d Gagliese told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cThey\u2019re oblivious to the world in which their kids are living.\u201d<\/p>\n As parents around the world wake up to the reality of the dangers of social media, some governments have taken steps to block kids from logging on, with Australia outright banning social media use for teens, and other countries, like France and Denmark, are making moves to follow suit. That debate has made its way to the U.S., with Florida enacting a ban, and others attempting to impose bans, although to legal headwinds.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gagliese isn\u2019t alone in his parenting practices. Other tech CEOs like Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel and YouTube\u2019s cofounder Steve Chen are taking a similar stance as Gagliese, moving to shield their kids from the perils of the internet.<\/p>\n His strict rules<\/strong><\/p>\n For Gagliese\u2019s kids, their media diet consists of highly moderated, educational content that is strictly balanced with offline activities like athletics, art, and playing outside. He and his wife allow his 5- and 6-year-old short bursts of screen time per day, about half-hour sessions, to avoid addiction-forming social media habits. He personally vets their content, ensuring it\u2019s educational and not pure clickbait or AI slop.\u00a0<\/p>\n That daily half hour screen time is about two hours less than what the average child spends on the screen. Kids aged 8 or younger total about 2.5 hours per day on devices, according to a 2025 Common Sense report. And one in five children age 13 and under use social media for four hours or more a day, according to social media company Aura.<\/p>\n His 14-year-old daughter\u2019s media diet is also limited to educational materials, with Gagliese permitting things like YouTube videos for 9th grade math help. \u201cAs a dad, I don\u2019t feel comfortable in her level of maturity yet to let her into the wild of what social media has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n Gagliese admits his strict social media guardrails could potentially render his daughter an outcast, noting that many of her friends are regular users of TikTok and Snapchat. But he said at her age, the dangers of social media usage far outweigh its benefits. \u201cThe juice isn\u2019t worth the squeeze,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A parent\u2019s responsibility<\/strong><\/p>\n To be clear, Gagliese doesn\u2019t support state-sanctioned bans on social media. After all, it\u2019s his business. In fact, the CEO sees social media as an incredible tool, if used the right way by the right people. He calls it illogical to place the impetus of regulation on tech companies. \u201cFacebook\u2019s not here to be the mom and dad,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, he said that responsibility falls in the bucket of parental responsibility, and he urges other parents to consider the same rules he\u2019s set in place for his kids.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to do better as moms and dads of getting in there and setting better boundaries and moderation,\u201d he said, \u201cand just not letting it become a thing that\u2019s just natural in their environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Meet #social #media #CEO #bars #kids #social #media #Parents #oblivious #world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American teens today are clock… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[5768,529,4709,4209,1916,716,302,15089,4205,3956,1034,930,931,51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}