Rosario Dawson won’t let her 15-year-old daughter, Lola, have a cellphone because she believes it’s bad for her mental health, the actress revealed at the Tribeca TV Festival on Saturday.
“I think it’s really critically important as the adult in these kids’ lives to make sure they’re not going down dark alleys without some kind of information and help … and to get likes according to little posts you’ve made and then thinking that that’s what your value is can be quite dangerous,” the 39-year-old activist said during a panel discussion moderated by Laverne Cox. “I think this is a critical time for kids to be developing themselves.”
She added, “They can present themselves online as opposed to develop themselves online. That’s a really different thing. We didn’t grow up looking in the mirror all the time. We just didn’t. We didn’t look at ourselves all day long and this is what these kids are doing.”
Dawson also touched on the dangers of young people looking at airbrushed or doctored photos and thinking they need to live up to those impossible standards of beauty.
“Now these kids are wanting to get plastic surgeries so they can look like what they look like when they have a filter on,” she said. “They’re getting body dysmorphia looking at their own image that’s been doctored, and then when they look in the mirror, they’re horrified by a freckle or a pimple.”
Dawson, who adopted her daughter nearly three years ago, typically keeps their relationship rather private, but discussed the responsibility she has as a parent in making sure her child uses social media responsibly.
“We are humans. We are not robots. We learn three-dimensionally and it’s important for us to develop in a certain kind of way and not constantly be looking at a screen,” she said. “It really is our responsibility to not be on our phones all the time, to not be lazy and pass over our iPads to our kids instead of talk to them, you know, to really kind of instill that relationship so that they understand that they can have a relationship with themselves that’s healthy that then they can share with people, not that it can be so easily manipulated.”
While social media can often have a negative effect on one’s perception of themselves, Cox made mention of the way a healthy relationship with the internet can actually help with self-confidence and self-love.
“One thing that I want to say about my Instagram is … it’s important to see trans folks, in a world where we’re constantly targeted, living our best lives and being happy and having fun,” she said.