Look who's using Apple's parental controls

From Scott Galloway’s Recode interview with Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Coddling of the American Mind“:

Galloway: So let’s talk a little about winners and losers. I’ll ask you if you think Apple is a winner. It seems to me that Apple has been very effective at starching their hat white in 2018 and trying to separate themselves from the rest of big tech and say that privacy is a basic human right. What are your observations on Tim Cook’s indignance tour and basically trying to say “we’re the good guys.”

Haidt: So, as a father who has been working on this for a couple of years, and trying to figure out how do I put healthy limits on my kids without being too intrusive, I’ve got to say the Apple controls work pretty well. I think Apple has responded. They were taking some heat last year. I don’t know how long these were in the works. But I think Facebook emerges as the one that has more ethical problems coming up. And Apple, as far as I know, has had fewer. So they are at least taking seriously this problem of tech addiction and the mental health effects that it may have.

Galloway: So, loser Facebook, winner Apple.

My take: This was just the Apple bit, and what amused me was that this critic of over-protective (“helicopter”) parents is an appreciative user of Apple’s parental tools. All in all it’s a fascinating Pivot episode (co-host Kara Swisher was away). Best part: These two veteran NYU professors trading stories about how hypersensitive Generation Z students have taken the joy—and the jokes—out of teaching. Here’s the Tunes link.