The Marketing Guy’s Worst Nightmare

I’m imagining being the marketing guy at Microsoft charged with increasing the amount of time a user spends on their computer each day, lets call it Director of PCMPD (PC Minutes per Day). Being Microsoft, I probably have a staff member for each segment – 6-10 years old, 11-15, 16-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc….plus a dotted line over to the enterprise PCMPD Director which is split into vertical segments, as well as a weekly meet-up with the XBOXMPD, ZuneMPD, MobileMPD and other MPD directors.

Now my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss, Mr Bill Gates himelf, comes out and says he and his wife Melinda decided to set a limit on their daughter of 45 minutes a day of total screen time for games and an hour a day on weekends, plus what time she needs for homework.  "Up to some age, to be determined, it’s very appropriate for a parent to get a sense of what they’re seeing out there and be able to have conversations about it," he said.

I think I just heard the head of the world’s largest software company say that kids should not spend all day in front of a screen….