Sam Altman deleted TikTok: 'too powerful,' 'dangerous' for kids

Altman's account of how he got hooked is tied to OpenAI's own product work. He has said he first got into TikTok while OpenAI was developing Sora, its now-defunct video generation app, to better understand the short-form video experience. What began as a few minutes before bed became an hour, then three hours on a Saturday afternoon. He eventually decided to step away and deleted the app, saying he did not feel he had enough self-control to keep it.

That personal experience shapes how he talks about the format. As a father of a young son, he said he wouldn't let his kids near TikTok and does not think it is reasonable to expect children to resist what he called 'that dopamine thing.' He has also said that becoming a parent through surrogacy changed how he thinks about the broader stakes of the technology he is helping build. His concerns echo what some teenagers report: a Pew Research Center survey this year found 28% of TikTok users ages 13 to 17 said they spend too much time on the app, 37% said it hurt their sleep, and 29% said it hurt productivity.

Other executives take a different angle. Insilico Medicine co-CEO Feng Ren recommends deliberately stepping away from the day's chaos, often reading WeChat and the news for 15 to 30 minutes, and says he favors scrolling in moderation. Virgin Group CEO Josh Bayliss has said he scrolls on apps like TikTok to understand younger consumers, noting the zeitgeist is 20-something year olds. For Altman, the fallback is often a more analog hobby: reading books, including first-party contemporaneous accounts of previous technological revolutions. How far his public caution about short-form video extends beyond his own family remains to be seen.