Penelope Cruz's Strict Rule for Her Kids With Javier Bardem

By Anna Rumer

Penélope Cruz and her husband, Javier Bardem, don't allow their 10-year-old son Leo or 8-year-old daughter Luna to use social media or smartphones, as they are holding off introducing them to that technology until they're much older. The 355 actress, 47, said social media feels like an "experiment" on developing brains in a Dec. 19 episode of CBS Sunday Morning, confessing even she doesn't like to use social media despite her career in the spotlight.

"I have a strange relationship with social media where I use very little of it in a very careful way," Cruz explained last month. "There is something that is not making sense, and it is especially affecting younger generations. I feel really bad for the ones that are teenagers now." The Vanilla Sky actress even compared teenagers' use of social media to "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,'" she continued. "The lack of protection that it is for a 12-year-old to be involved in social media, any form of social media, there's no protection for them, for their brains that are still developing, and how that affects the way they see themselves, everything, like, related to bullying. So many things that are not the childhood that we had."

The Oscar winner is also very strict when it comes to the kind of media her kids interact with. "I'm very tough with technology, for example, with my kids," she said. "It's like, yeah, we're going to watch movies sometimes or some cartoons. How can I not let them watch movies? That has been, like, some incredible moments of happiness since I was a little girl. But not phones until they are much older and no social media until at least 16. I really see that that is, like, protecting mental health, but I seem to be part of a minority. I don't know."

Cruz has long held her beliefs about keeping her kids off social media, even her own account. In 2017, she told The Telegraph, "You will never see a picture of my kids on Instagram. I will never do that. I feel like I am responsible to protect that privacy." The star largely uses her social media to share photos from her own career moments or promote causes about which she feels passionately.

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