A Technologist’s Viewpoint: Why Tomorrow's Tech Leaders Are Today's Screen-Free Kids
About the author: Matt Pulley is a father and tech entrepreneur who founded Four Norms, a platform helping families and communities organize for positive change. As a former Chief Technology Officer at venture-backed companies including Home Chef and Snapsheet, he has hired hundreds of engineers and built technical teams from the ground up. His experience seeing what skills actually separate successful technologists from the rest has shaped his advocacy for developing children's foundational cognitive abilities before introducing them to screens.
As a technologist who has spent a career building engineering teams and organizations, I want to share with parents what we know but rarely say publicly: The myth that we need to expose our kids to tech early and often so they're prepared for the digital world is not just wrong, it's actively harmful to developing the skills we actually hire for.
When I get to speak in front of parents, of course I explain what I know about engagement-based apps and persuasive design. But the most important message I want to tell them is this: The best hiring leaders in tech focus on skills like critical thinking, a growth mindset, emotional intelligence, and self-regulation. These are the traits that C-level leaders know form high functioning teams and deliver the most value for their organizations.
These aren't technical skills you learn from coding tutorials or AI training programs. These are human skills that develop through real-world interactions, unstructured play, handling boredom, navigating social dynamics, and learning to regulate emotions without the constant stimulation of screens.
The Problem with Early Tech Exposure
Here's what concerns me as both a technologist and a parent advocating for kids and families: Screens and especially Generative AI in the classroom actively undermine kids’ ability to develop these critical skills for future careers. Not only because of the design decisions made on those products, but also because they are entirely unregulated.
Research shows us that early screen use, especially with engagement-based technologies, creates:
Cognitive offloading: When AI does the thinking for us, we don't develop our own critical thinking muscles and we give away our agency.
Attention fragmentation: Constant notifications and rapid content switching make it harder to develop sustained focus.
Reduced person-to-person interaction: Screens displace the very interactions that build emotional intelligence and social skills.
Diminished self-regulation: When entertainment is always a swipe away, we never learn to sit with discomfort or boredom.
As Amy Tyson from EverySchool brilliantly explains in her article on After Babel, “the skills students are more likely to miss are soft skills—critical thinking, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, interpersonal skills, creativity, and even simple eye contact. These are the skills they'll need to navigate the ever-changing landscape of technology and future workplaces.” It is that last part, future workplaces, that resonates with me as we’re already seeing this lack of skills in the workforce.
The Real Preparation Kids Need
Here's what I wish every parent knew: We don’t need to give our kids access to tech early in order for them to be successful in high school, college, and the future job market. It is more important to fully develop self-regulation, attention span, and an offline identity before introducing them to algorithm-driven technologies.
“We don’t need to give our kids access to tech early in order for them to be successful in high school, college, and the future job market.”
Consider this: A child starting school this year will graduate high school around 2037. While we can't predict specific digital tools they will use in their careers, we know the pattern: every breakthrough technology requires the same human skills—critical thinking to evaluate information, emotional intelligence to work in teams, and sustained attention to solve complex problems.
Teenagers have always and will always pick up technology faster than their parents. This was true for you as a teenager, and it will be true for your grandkids. We don't have to worry about their ability to learn new technologies, like Generative AI, in their teenage years. What we do have to be concerned about is whether or not they will have the cognitive building blocks to know what to do with these tools once they learn them.
The Stakes Are Higher Than We Think
If we're not careful, immersing our early learners in unregulated technologies like Generative AI risks an entire generation unable to use these amazing tools to solve humanity's most critical issues. This problem is upstream of all the rest, because it matters how fully developed and agentic our own kids grow up to be, so that they can wield the tools to solve our biggest problems.
A Technologist's Advice to Parents on the Future Job Market
We have a saying when hiring on my tech teams: We can always teach you to code/design better, but it’s near impossible for us to teach you the EQ skills you’ll need to succeed in our organization. The folks I’m hiring and the future tech leaders I want on my team will be the candidates who have mastered these foundational skills. Here’s my advice on how to give your child that gift:
1. Prioritize offline identity first. Let your children develop:
The ability to focus for extended periods without external stimulation
Self-regulation and emotional intelligence through real-world challenges
Creative problem-solving without algorithmic assistance
Social skills through face-to-face interaction
2. Resist the pressure to introduce technology "early and often." Your child's future success in technology depends far more on their ability to develop agency, work with others, and solve complex problems than on their familiarity with any particular digital tool.
3. Trust that technical skills can be learned quickly when developmentally appropriate. What cannot be easily remediated later are the foundational cognitive and emotional skills that develop during childhood and adolescence, the very skills that tech leaders prioritize.
“Your child’s future success in technology depends far more on their ability to develop agency, work with others, and solve complex problems than on their familiarity with any particular digital tool.”
The best technologists I've worked with aren't those who started coding in elementary school. They're the ones who can think through complex problems, communicate effectively with team members, adapt to new challenges, and maintain focus when things get difficult. These are the skills that set apart the technologists who build the future from those who merely consume it.
Let's give our children the gift of a fully developed offline identity before we introduce them to the algorithms designed to capture their attention. Their future—and our world's future—depends on it.