Tim Kendall
Whistleblowers & Insiders · Facebook (formerly), Moment
Facebook's former monetization chief who told Congress the platforms were engineered to be as addictive as cigarettes.
Tim Kendall served as Facebook's director of monetization, work central to the advertising strategy that funded the platform's growth. In House testimony in September 2020, he told lawmakers the platforms were built to be "as addictive as cigarettes," comparing their design choices to the tobacco industry's own playbook. After leaving the industry, he built the Moment app, which helps people track and reduce their own screen time — turning his inside knowledge of persuasive product design into a tool aimed at counteracting it.
Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.
WORKS IN THE LIBRARY (11)
VIDEOS
MINDED Podcast Interview: Tim Kendall on the 'Tech Epidemic'
In this February 2019 episode of the MINDED podcast, host Yuri Xavier interviews Tim Kendall shortly after he left Pinterest to become CEO of Moment, an app built to help people track and reduce phone use. Kendall discusses what the conversation frames as a broader 'tech epidemic' of compulsive phone checking, and explains his decision to leave senior roles at Facebook and Pinterest — where he had helped build the advertising and growth systems behind those platforms — to instead build tools aimed at healthier device habits. He describes heavy phone use as a widespread pattern worth addressing rather than a diagnosis, and outlines Moment's coaching approach as one practical option for families. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as an early, first-person account of Kendall's shift from platform-growth work toward screen-time harm reduction.
KTLA 5 Morning News: Curb Your Tech Addiction With Moment CEO Tim Kendall
In this brief live segment on KTLA 5 Morning News, Tim Kendall, CEO of the screen-time app Moment, joins anchor Danielle Pendleton to discuss practical steps viewers can take to reduce compulsive phone checking. Introduced by his background at Facebook and Pinterest, Kendall walks through Moment's step-by-step coaching approach for building more intentional smartphone habits and points viewers to the app to track their own usage. The segment is a short, general-audience television treatment of screen-time habits rather than an in-depth policy or research discussion. TechKids Foundation includes it as a documented example of Kendall using a mainstream local-news platform to reach parents and other viewers directly with harm-reduction tips, distinct from his later, more pointed public criticism of the platforms he helped build.
Are Smartphones Actually That Bad For You? — Interview With Tim Kendall
On this episode of the podcast 'This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley,' hosts Sunil Rajaraman and Jascha Kaykas-Wolff interview Tim Kendall, then CEO of the screen-time app Moment, about his path from Facebook's early monetization team through the presidency of Pinterest and into building tools meant to counter habits he helped design. Kendall says he regrets aspects of his earlier work, describes Facebook as unusually effective at engineering habitual use, and argues that simply swapping one app for another — trading social media for news or browsing — does not resolve compulsive phone use on its own. He also discusses limiting his own young children to brief, passive screen time and calls Apple's Screen Time feature an insufficient response by itself. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a detailed, first-person account of his reasoning as both a former platform executive and a parent.
Fmr. Pinterest President on Social Media Addiction: 'We've Got a Really Serious Health Issue on Our Hands'
In this Yahoo Finance interview, Tim Kendall — founder and CEO of the screen-time app Moment, and former director of monetization at Facebook and president of Pinterest — tells the network 'we've got a really serious health issue on our hands' when discussing widespread social media use. He describes his move from building engagement-driven products to building an app meant to help people understand and reduce their own phone use, framing the scale of habitual platform use as a public-health-style concern rather than an individual failing. The interview centers on his personal account as a former industry insider rather than on new data or research. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a mainstream financial-media venue where Kendall summarized his concerns for a general audience shortly before his Congressional testimony the following week.
Tech Insiders Explain the Mental Health Impacts of Social Media
In this 60 Minutes Australia segment, Nine Network journalists interview Tim Kendall, Facebook's former director of monetization, alongside former Twitter engineering executive Alex Roetter, presenting them as Silicon Valley insiders willing to discuss concerns about the platforms they helped build. Kendall discusses his view that the business model behind major platforms is associated with strained mental health, particularly for younger users, and describes his decision to leave the industry to build Moment, a screen-time tracking app. The segment situates his account within Australian television coverage of the international debate over social media's design and regulation. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a documented instance of Kendall making his case to an international broadcast audience shortly after his U.S. Congressional testimony.
Social Media Dangers — Tim Kendall (Full Episode)
In this nearly 50-minute video interview on the Startup to Storefront podcast, Tim Kendall discusses what he calls 'social obesity' — his term for excessive, low-value platform use — and contrasts it with what he sees as denial among both users and companies about the scale of the problem. He walks through his career from Facebook's early monetization team through Pinterest's presidency to founding Moment, describes how he judges healthy versus unhealthy platform use under a framework he calls 'social health,' and gives his views on whether creators can responsibly build audiences on platforms he considers designed for maximum engagement. The conversation also touches on the 2020 U.S. election and platform accountability for misinformation. TechKids Foundation includes this long-form interview as one of Kendall's more extensive public explanations of his personal framework for evaluating problematic platform use.
Former Facebook and Pinterest Exec Tim Kendall Traces 'Extractive Business Models' to VCs
In this TechCrunch interview, Tim Kendall argues that venture-capital funding structures are a root driver of what he calls 'extractive business models' in consumer technology, saying board-level pressure to grow user bases and monetize quickly pushed social platforms toward engagement-maximizing design. He tells the outlet that Facebook's ad-driven model, combined with increasingly capable technology, created a particularly potent mix, and calls the company 'absolutely negligent' in addressing harms such as misinformation. Rather than adversarial regulation alone, he proposes revisiting Section 230 and shifting future technology investment toward patient capital without the typical seven-to-ten-year VC exit horizon. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as Kendall's structural, business-model-focused account of why platforms became engagement-driven, delivered roughly a month after his Congressional testimony on the same subject.
TESTIMONY
Written Testimony Before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce
In written testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, for a hearing on social media's role in radicalization, Tim Kendall — Facebook's first director of monetization — testified that he and colleagues deliberately built engagement techniques into the platform, drawing an extended comparison to methods he associated with the tobacco industry's history of engineering cigarettes for potency. He said features such as status updates and photo tagging were, in his words, part of what he called groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis, and argued that Section 230's liability shield lets platforms avoid accountability for the incendiary content their algorithms amplify. He called for regulatory change while acknowledging his own past role. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as Kendall's most-cited public statement, presented here as his own claims rather than independently verified findings.
Written Statement in Support of AB 2273, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act
Tim Kendall submitted a written statement, in his individual capacity, supporting California Assembly Bill 2273, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which the state Senate Judiciary Committee quoted at length in its official analysis of the bill. The analysis identifies him as the first director of monetization at Facebook who "created the advertising model that has driven the company's massive profitability and growth." Kendall writes that tech workers want to design products that prioritize wellbeing over profit, but that the profit motive will keep design working against users' — especially children's — collective wellbeing until political leaders change the incentives, pointing to the United Kingdom's own design code as a precedent he says has already prompted large companies to describe positive changes. TechKids Foundation includes this as a record of his advocacy entering state legislation, distinct from his federal testimony two years earlier.