American teens today are clocking onto social media sites like it’s their day job, with more than half spending nearly five hours per day on social platforms, according to a 2023 Gallup poll. They’re 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—and in many cases, strangers, too.
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’t 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.
Gagliese’s 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’d also be cracking down on their kids’ screen time.
“These parents don’t understand that their kids sent 5,000 TikToks or snaps in the last 6 days,” Gagliese told Fortune. “They’re oblivious to the world in which their kids are living.”
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.
Gagliese isn’t alone in his parenting practices. Other tech CEOs like Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel and YouTube’s cofounder Steve Chen are taking a similar stance as Gagliese, moving to shield their kids from the perils of the internet.
His strict rules
For Gagliese’s 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’s educational and not pure clickbait or AI slop.
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.
His 14-year-old daughter’s media diet is also limited to educational materials, with Gagliese permitting things like YouTube videos for 9th grade math help. “As a dad, I don’t feel comfortable in her level of maturity yet to let her into the wild of what social media has to offer.”
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. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze,” he said.
A parent’s responsibility
To be clear, Gagliese doesn’t support state-sanctioned bans on social media. After all, it’s 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. “Facebook’s not here to be the mom and dad,” he said.
Instead, he said that responsibility falls in the bucket of parental responsibility, and he urges other parents to consider the same rules he’s set in place for his kids.
“We need to do better as moms and dads of getting in there and setting better boundaries and moderation,” he said, “and just not letting it become a thing that’s just natural in their environment.”
