Actress Jennifer Garner recently discussed why she won’t allow her three children to use social media, and how her eldest daughter is actually grateful for the rule.
The star of the upcoming Apple TV+ series “The Last Thing He Told Me” discussed the issue during the April 11 episode of “TODAY” with Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb.
“I just said to my kids, ‘Show me the articles that prove that social media is good for teenagers, and then we’ll have the conversation,'” the 50-year-old actress said. “Find scientific evidence that matches what I have that says that it’s not good for teenagers, then we’ll chat.”
Garner shares daughters Violet, 17, and Seraphina, 13, along with son Samuel, 11, with her ex-husband Ben Affleck.
“My eldest is grateful,” the “13 Going On 30” alum added. “It’s a long haul. I have a couple more to go, so just knock on wood. We’ll see if I really hang in there.”
Garner was on “TODAY” discussing her new project, “The Last Thing He Told Me,” which is based on a thriller novel by the same name. It follows a woman who has to team up with her teenage stepdaughter to find her missing husband. She described the storyline as being about “motherhood” and said she drew on real life experiences for the role.
“I’m familiar,” she said. “My teens are pretty great, so I can’t really toss them in there. It’s a different scenario, different friction, but I am familiar with being deeply embarrassing, yes.”
Garner isn’t the only celebrity to speak out on technology use for kids. Penelope Cruz, who has two children with husband Javier Bardem, also admitted to having strict rules about social media and screen time.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
“I really see that that is protecting mental health, but I seem to be part of a minority,” Cruz said during a CBS Sunday Morning appearance in December 2021. “I feel really bad for the ones that are teenagers now. It’s almost [as] if the world was doing some kind of experiment on them. ‘Oh, let’s see what happens if you expose a 12-year-old to that much technology.’”
“There is no protection for them, for brains that are still developing and how that affects the way they see themselves, how everything related to bullying, so many things that are not the childhood that we had,” she continued. “[My kids] can [only] watch movies sometimes or some cartoons. How can I not let them watch movies? [Those have] been some incredible moments of happiness since I was a little girl.”