Bill Gates: Addictive nature of social media make it difficult for kids to develop

Bill Gates isn’t sure he would’ve become a billionaire if he’d grown up like kids today, dealing with the distractions of smartphones and social media, El.kz cites cnbs.com.

Gates, the co-founder and ex-CEO of Microsoft, helped make computers and the internet ubiquitous. But he might never have built the tech giant — valued at $3.26 trillion, as of Wednesday afternoon — without the time he spent growing up roaming around with friends, exploring the outside world, and reading and thinking deeply in his room for hours at a time, Gates wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

“When I felt restless or bored — or got in trouble for misbehaving — I would disappear into my room and lose myself in books or ideas, often for hours without interruption,” Gates wrote. “This ability to turn idle time into deep thinking and learning became a fundamental part of who I am.”

He added: “It was also crucial to my success later on.”

In his blog post, Gates recommendd a book: The Anxious Generation,” by New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, which explores how smartphones and social media have rewired rewired kids' brains. 

The book also argues that these technologies helped create a youth mental health crisis, marked by rising levels of loneliness and depression for Gen Zers. Constant use of smartphones and social media can also negatively affect young people’s memory, ability to concentrate and attention spans, research shows.

Gates touted his “play-based childhood” — which inspires creative thinking, research shows — over the “phone-based childhood” that many kids today experience, according to Haidt’s book.

“Our attention spans are like muscles, and the non-stop interruptions and addictive nature of social media make it incredibly difficult for them to develop,” Gates wrote.

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