If you want to wind up tech workers in San Francisco, try asking them about their policy on screen time. Even at the heart of an industry devoted to wheedling us all into spending more time online, screen addiction is treated as a real affliction. Only here, there is an added twinge of guilt.
Friends whose jobs are in tech and who have toddlers still get worked up talking about a story published in The New York Times in 2018 that quoted venture capitalists and high-ranking tech employees being hypervigilant about keeping their young children away from smartphones while working at companies that hook users to theirs.
Some friends rail at the hypocrisy of those interviewed — among them a former executive assistant at Facebook. Others get defensive as they acknowledge that they too have a strict time limit on screens of any kind — despite the nature of their own employment.