Jennifer Garner Explains Why She Doesn’t Let Her Kids — 17, 14 and 11 — Have Social Media

Jennifer Garner has the perfect response as to why she doesn’t allow her three kids to have social media. The actress, 50, appeared on the TODAY show Tuesday, where she told hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager that she had a frank conversation with her kids about the harmful aspects of social media. 

“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,’” said Garner, who is mother to daughters Violet, 17, and Seraphina Rose, 14, and son Samuel, 11, with ex-husband Ben Affleck. The Alias actress also told her kids to “find scientific evidence that matches what I have, that says that it’s not good for teenagers. Then we’ll chat.”

When it comes to how her kids are handling life without social media, Garner said Violet is “grateful” for the boundary, and that time will tell if she eventually changes her mind with the younger kids. “We’ll see. I mean, it’s a long haul,” she explained. “I have a couple more to go, so just knock on wood. We’ll see if I really hang in there.”

Garner has long protected her kids from the exposure of social media, explaining in a 2019 episode of Next Question with Katie Couric while her then-13-year-old eldest daughter wasn’t able to join Instagram. “Without even having parents who are well-known, I worry about all kids having to deal with this new pressure,” Garner explained at the time. “My daughter’s at an all-girl school, and it’s such a huge problem.”

“She’ll occasionally talk to me about getting Instagram, and I can see why because I’m on there and it’s something kind of fun that I do, and I am modeling the opposite of what I want for her to do,” she continued of her own social media presence. “How often is that in parenting?” She continued, “I just say, ‘When you can show me studies that say that teenage girls are happier using Instagram than not, then we can have the conversation. But everything you look at, I don’t see anything positive for you out there. You can look at mine when you want to, we can go over it together, but I just don’t see it.’”