4 minBusiness
Sam Altman Says He Scrolls TikTok Before Bed but Calls Short-Form Video Dangerous for Kids
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he enjoys short-form video to unwind before sleep, but after his own scrolling grew to three hours in one sitting, he deleted TikTok and now warns the format is dangerous for young children.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spends his working hours at the center of the artificial intelligence boom, but he says his way of unwinding at night is the same one used by millions of Americans: short-form video. Speaking in a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Altman said he likes watching five or ten minutes of short clips before bed as a way to relax.
His relationship with the format has not stayed that simple. Altman said he first began using TikTok while OpenAI was developing Sora, its video generation app, so he could better understand how short-form video works. What started as a few minutes before sleep stretched into an hour, and then, on one Saturday afternoon, into three hours of scrolling. He eventually decided to step away from the app.
«I deleted TikTok because it was just too powerful,» Altman said on the Relentless podcast earlier this year. «I think the iPhone is amazing and yet I did not feel like I had enough self-control to keep that app.»
That personal experience has shaped a more cautious public view. Altman, a father of a young son, said he does not believe the technology is suitable for everyone, particularly the youngest generation. «I wouldn’t let my kids near that stuff, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect kids to be able to resist that dopamine thing or know that they even should,» he said. «I don’t think short form video is inherently evil, but I do think it’s dangerous.»
His concerns echo what some teenagers report about their own use. A Pew Research Center survey released this year found that 28% of TikTok users ages 13 to 17 said they spend too much time on the app, while 37% said it has negatively affected their sleep and 29% said it has hurt their productivity.
Altman’s warnings carry unusual weight because he is not a critic on the outside of the technology industry. He served as president of the startup incubator Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019 and now leads OpenAI, one of the most closely watched companies in the AI race. His comments also reflect how becoming a parent through surrogacy early last year changed his thinking about the stakes of the technology he is helping build. He has said fatherhood made him consider more deeply what it means to get AI right for humanity.
Other business leaders describe a similar pull toward short-form platforms, though with different conclusions. Feng Ren, co-CEO and head of drug research and development at the AI drug discovery startup Insilico Medicine, said at Fortune’s Leaders Forum in Macau that he sets aside time during the day to step away from the chaos, often sitting on a sofa for 15 to 30 minutes to read WeChat messages and the news. He said he favors scrolling on social media in moderation and even recommends that people do it more.
Virgin Group CEO Josh Bayliss has said he uses apps like TikTok not only for entertainment but to understand younger consumers his businesses are trying to reach. «The zeitgeist is not people in their 50s like me,» Bayliss told Fortune. «The zeitgeist is 20-something year olds who are shaping the culture that we have an obligation to serve.» He added that executives have to keep the volume turned up around the clock.
For Altman, the fallback when he wants to disengage is more analog. He has described reading as a long-standing hobby, including first-person contemporary accounts of earlier technological revolutions. The habit offers a contrast with the short-form video he still enjoys in small doses — and with the three-hour Saturday afternoons that led him to delete the app in the first place.
