Penélope Cruz refuses to give her children phones: “It’s so easy to be manipulated”

Penelope Cruz

Penélope Cruz has shared that her children, aged ten and 12, do not have mobile phones.

The Spanish actor has a son, Leo and a daughter, Luna with actor Javier Bardem. In a recent interview for Elle Magazine, Cruz said: “It’s so easy to be manipulated, especially if you have a brain that is still forming.”

She continued: “And who pays the price? Not us, not our generation, who, maybe at 25, learned how a BlackBerry worked.”

“It’s a cruel experiment on children, on teenagers,” continued the Ferrari star.

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem
Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem on March 27 2022 in Hollywood, California. CREDIT: Getty/Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images

This follows similar comments Cruz made back in 2021, speaking on CBS Sunday Morning. The actor said: “I’m very tough with technology, for example, with my kids, we can watch movies sometimes, or some cartoons. How can I not let them watch movies if that has been some incredible moments of [my] happiness since I was a little girl?”

She explained: “But not phones until they are much older, and no social media until at least 16. I really see that as protecting mental health. But I seem to be part of a minority.”

“I have a very strange relationship with social media,” she added. “Where I use very little of it in a very careful way. There is something that is not making sense, and it’s especially affecting younger generations. I feel really bad for the ones that are teenagers now.”

She reiterated: “It’s almost [as] if the world was doing some kind of experiment on them. ‘Oh, let’s see what happens if you expose a 12-year-old to that much technology.’”

In other news, Cruz revealed the scene she wanted cut from Ferrari.

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