Actress Eva Mendes and her husband, actor Ryan Gosling, prohibit their children from using smartphones. Their daughters also do not access the internet. Mendes revealed the “extreme” reasons for this ban.
Ryan and Eva discussed their parenting methods for their 10-year-old daughter Esmeralda and 8-year-old daughter Amada. Mendes admitted that she doesn’t allow her homeschooled children to use smartphones or social media.
“Putting my child on the internet and saying, ‘Oh, go look something up’ feels to me like saying, ‘Oh, just go outside in the middle of the night. You’ll be fine.’ I know this sounds extreme, but that’s how I feel,” she said.
The actress also shared how she tries to raise the girls with consideration for her and Ryan’s childhood experiences. She added, “I explain to them what we didn’t have, what Ryan didn’t have when he was little, how hard we had to struggle, the dark days when we were living paycheck to paycheck, but they will never truly understand until they experience it themselves.”
Mendes mentioned that she also tries to help her daughters with their self-esteem by giving them tasks around the house. However, she admitted that she worries about what they might inadvertently learn from her. She said, “I still have all this anxiety, and I see that I’m passing it on to my children. Subconsciously, I can’t imagine them inheriting something from me that I wouldn’t want them to inherit.”
