Celebrities Reveal Why They Don’t Allow Kids on Social Media
By Movieguide® Contributor
With their fame trickling down to their families, many celebrities have had to decide if their kids should be on social media or if they should be shielded from the public.
Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila recently allowed their son to join social media for his 15th birthday. Although Instagram allows users to join as early as 13, they wanted to keep him off the site until he was secure in his identity.
“We’ve been preparing for this, talking about this for three years now,” McConaughey and his wife shared. “All his friends have had it for a long time, we’ve been holding out. [Levi] knows who he is. He’s knows what he’s going at. And [we] think he can handle it.”
Other celebrities have shared that they will likely keep their kids off social media forever.
“I told [my daughter] point blank, ‘If you can produce literature for me from a reputable source that tells me social media is good for you, then you can be on it,’” singer Pink said.
Jennifer Garner shares a similar sentiment, telling her kids she needs scientific proof about the positives of social media use before she would allow them to create an account.
HGTV stars Ben and Erin Napier feel so strongly about keeping their kids off social media that they created a nonprofit to encourage, support and connect parents committed to keeping their kids off social media until they graduate high school.
Not all celebrities, however, agree with this message. Some invite their fans into their lives, allowing full access to them and their families. Kim Kardashian, for example, has a joint TikTok account with her 10-year-old daughter that boasts over 16 million followers.
While the question of whether or not to allow your kids on social media is complicated, Movieguide® advises parents to wait until their children are old enough to make media-wise decisions and properly monitor the content they consume and the amount of time they spend on their devices.
Research has shown that adolescents who spend more time on social media are more likely to develop depression and struggle with poor mental health.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Teenagers who spend more time on social media have increased depression, according to recent studies. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study placing suicide as the second leading cause of death amongst individuals aged 10-34.
Social media is not the direct cause but rather the correlation between the spike in depression and its use. The basic human to human interaction has been lost on many levels through social media.
Cyberbullying effects 60% of all students. This leads to one in four girls self-harming, and one in ten boys doing the same.
Bergen Facebook Scale (BFAS) is a scale developed by scientists to measure addiction in people who use Facebook. The sole purpose of the scale was to see the increase of addiction to Facebook over time. The results concluded that Social media is more addictive than cigarettes according to an additional study done by the University of Chicago.
