Jessica Alba Reveals Her Brilliant Strategy To Get Her Teen off Devices & Our Jaws Are on the Floor
It seems parents are [understandably] in a constant battle with their kids to get them off their devices and lessen their screen time. And the key word there is “battle.” Because kids — especially t(w)eens who have been sucked into the world of social media — will resist, resist, resist no matter how hard a parent or caregiver tries to enforce screen time rules.
So Jessica Alba blew our minds when she revealed her unique and brilliant plan for getting her eldest daughter Honor, 16 to put down her iPad. When speaking at an event announcing the launch of more restrictive Teen Accounts on Instagram, the actress described how she handled a then-10-year-old Honor downloading a game that she thought wasn’t age-appropriate.
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“I told Honor, ‘I can choose your punishment or you choose your punishment.'”
Honor took the former option, fearing her mother’s punishment would be awful. But in reality, the then-tween made it worse for herself. She decided she should not be allowed to use her iPad until Christmas … three months away! Which is way longer than Alba would have proposed.
*Jaw drop*
Seriously?! The kid picks a harsher punishment while thinking they’re getting off easy? Is this true across the board? Of course, we don’t want a reason to test this out, but should the situation arise, we’re dying to know if this is commonplace.
Once the three months were up, Alba — who also shares kids Haven, 13 and Hayes, 7 with husband Cash Warren — went to return Honor’s device, but the tween made a shocking move.
“[She was like], ‘Maybe I’ll just go a little longer’ and she did another three months [without it],” Alba said. “So Honor learned early to self-regulate and she said she liked herself better.”
It’s an incredible story to hear, especially when more and more research suggests screen and social media usage lowers young girls’ self-esteem.
That major parenting win happened before Honor was on social media. When she first joined, Alba monitored her daughter’s account, unfollowing people she “thought could be problematic” and following “a bunch of people that she thought would be great for her.”
“It’s always like a bunch of body-positive accounts and animals,” Alba explained. ” … Just things in her feed that really bring more joy like Inspirational quotes, science stuff.”
“So it kind of tricks the algorithm into having more of that stuff than just Get Ready With Me videos or fashion tips or whatever it is,” she continued.
With Instagram’s new Teen Accounts — which are now in effect for new users and will be rolled out for current teen users in the U.S. over the next 60 days — parents will have similar controls. The accounts are automatically set to private so that users have to accept any followers (mitigating the risk of connecting with “problematic” people), the app will go into “Sleep Mode” from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. so users can’t be scrolling at 2 a.m., and they will have an easier time curating their feed with the Interests feature which allows teens to tell the app they like to see content about music, sports, etc.
With the parental supervision features, parents can oversee their child’s interests as well as how else they’re using the app. Users 16 and younger will need a parent’s permission via Instagram to change any of the more restrictive Teen Account settings.
“I really like this design because it creates an incentive for your teens to involve you as their parent in their Instagram experience,” Naomi Gleit, head of product at Meta, said when speaking at the launch event.
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