Observing the same individuals who created our collective screen addiction now restricting their own kids’ weekly screen time to ninety minutes is incredibly bizarre. Speaking at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, Peter Thiel revealed that his two young children are only permitted to use screens for an hour and a half every seven days. Apparently, the audience gasped. It’s difficult to tell if that response was a result of recognition or surprise. In order to get their toddlers through the afternoon, the majority of parents worldwide are doing the exact opposite.
The World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP) and other international early childhood advocates have been grappling with this subtle contradiction for years. OMEP is a quiet organization that was founded in 1948 and operates in more than 60 countries. Viral campaigns are not something it does. However, something changed in the room during its 76th World Assembly in Bangkok in 2024: a growing dissatisfaction with the way commercial technology is infiltrating a child’s early years with virtually no accountability.
The issues are not hypothetical. When it comes to children under five, the researchers and educators present at that conference asked pointed questions about what digitalization truly means. Platforms collecting behavioral data, gamified tools rewarding compliance with digital coins, and apps promising personalized learning are all real futures. They are already in classrooms, influencing young children’s perceptions of effort, reward, and attention. The distinction between a child playing with blocks and a child chasing leaderboard points on an app created by a group of behavioral engineers in San Francisco may go unnoticed by many parents.
There is ample evidence of the irony, if you can call it that. It wasn’t until they were fourteen that Bill Gates gave his kids smartphones. Evan Spiegel of Snap is said to adhere to the same stringent screen restrictions as Thiel. In 2010, Steve Jobs told a reporter that his children had never used an iPad. The attention economy was designed by these people. They made different decisions for their own families because they seemed to have a close understanding of what they were creating. The rest of the world did not have the same discretion, especially in low-income areas where digital tools are heavily promoted as advancements in education.
Despite the uneven terrain, OMEP and its allies are making a comeback. Thirty percent of children in tracked countries are not developing on schedule, according to UNESCO data presented at the Bangkok conference. In fact, since 2020, pre-primary enrollment has decreased. In low-income nations, there is still a severe teacher shortage. In light of this, policymakers with limited funding find a shiny app that promises to close the learning gap to be very appealing. The question of whether those apps actually deliver—beyond improving a test score on a specific metric—is frequently left unanswered. Researchers at the conference pointed out that the evidence base is scant, often funded by the industry itself, and infrequently analyzed from a human rights perspective.
As this develops, there is a feeling that what is referred to as the “democratization of education” merits more investigation. The human-centered, well-resourced environments that elite families enjoy are not the same as the tools being scaled to millions of children in the Global South. Gamified drills and algorithmic nudges are available in one version. The other provides genuine intellectual engagement, conversation, and mentors. The difference between those two experiences is more about what kind of future we’re creating and for whom than it is about technical details.
OMEP’s overarching stance is unambiguous: early childhood is too crucial and developmentally sensitive to be entrusted to commercial interests without careful examination, legally binding supervision, and the consistent implementation of children’s rights. It’s not a radical notion. It’s a pretty obvious one. However, it hasn’t always been popular to argue that some things, like a person’s first five years of life, might not need to be disrupted in a world where Silicon Valley executives are commended for upending every institution they come into contact with.
