Chrissy Teigen understands better than most the perils of the online world, which is why she doesn’t want her kids on social media until after high school.
Chrissy joined Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder of DreamWorks and founding partner at WndrCo, for a conversation on all things parenting in the age of social media at the Aura Digital Parenting Summit in New York on Tuesday.
“Unless there are more rules and regulations in place, I would prefer for them not to be on social”, the mother of four said. “I want them to be safe and happy and flourishing as kids.”
Regulating social media consumption for kids is a common worry for countless parents, and she spoke to the heart of the issue when she sat down with Katzenberg: “They [children] won’t have the capacity to understand how fake this [expletive] is.”
Chrissy’s name is synonymous with motherhood; she shares Luna, 8, Miles, 6, Esti, 16 months, and Wren, 11 months, with husband and All of Me singer John Legend. She was well-equipped to delve into the topic on Tuesday, having been in the public eye for over a decade and experiencing constant online trolling ever since.
The summit saw over 300 scientists, activists and leaders in the parenting sphere discuss e-safety and how parents can begin to protect their kids from the hazards of social media.
During her conversation with Katzenberg, she was adamant that the ads children see on YouTube should “absolutely” be regulated. “It makes me very uncomfortable…who am I going to call (to complain]?”
The Teigen-Legend household strictly regulates iPad time, where the kids are allowed “maybe an hour on weekends”. According to Chrissy, Luna is “obsessed” with Duolingo, the language app that teaches everything from Spanish to Elvish.
For the 38-year-old, parenting is about trial and error, especially in the age of social media. Sharing her thoughts on the Aura Summit via Instagram, Chrissy wrote, “So much more can be taught from mistakes than perfection”.
She has been vocal about her struggle with the online hate she receives, writing in a recent Instagram post that “I feel like a very shrunken version of myself.”
“I find myself fighting with myself all day in my brain with things I want to say, things I want to explain, but I’m just so fearful,” she continued, sharing that she’s working on accepting her own imperfections.
Although she wants to limit her kids’ access to social media, the Sports Illustrated model explained the reason why she so often posts about them on her own: “I do share them a lot because, in so much of my life, I feel like people don’t understand me. But being a mom is where a lot of people understand me.”
She garnered widespread admiration in the past for her transparency and vulnerability about her struggles to conceive, her IVF journey and the heart-breaking miscarriage she suffered in 2020.
Chrissy and John endured the loss of their third child, who they had named Jack, due to complications during pregnancy in September of that year.
In her candid Instagram post about the tragedy that had over 11 million likes, she wrote, “On this darkest of days, we will grieve, we will cry our eyes out. But we will hug and love each other harder and get through it.”