Kelly Clarkson’s kids are banned from social media for as long as they live under her roof. The singer and talk show host explained her reasoning in a January 2024 cover interview with People, saying the platforms “can be really hard on kids in general but especially kids with parents in the public eye.” So she’s “informed them they’re not allowed to, under my roof, ever have it.”
Her nine-year-old daughter, River Rose, has already tried to find a loophole. When River asked what would happen if her father allowed social media at his house, Clarkson didn’t budge. “I’m like, ‘Well, you’re there four days a month. Enjoy that,” she told People. “And right now he’s not letting them do it either.” Clarkson shares River and her seven-year-old son, Remington, with ex-husband Brandon Blackstock. Their divorce took two years to finalize, but the two are aligned on this particular rule.
The ban isn’t permanent in Clarkson’s mind, but her kids will need to earn any exceptions. “I’ll listen when they’re older, but until they have a solid argument, it’s a no,” she said. Clarkson isn’t claiming to have all the answers about raising kids in a digital age, and she’s admitted she’s figuring things out like any other parent. But on this issue, she’s drawn a hard line, and she’s holding it.
A Growing Movement Among Parents
Kelly Clarkson isn’t alone in her thinking. Jennifer Garner told the Today show she challenged her children to prove the platforms were safe before she’d even consider allowing access. “I just said to my kids, ‘Show me the articles that prove that social media is good for teenagers, and then we’ll have the conversation,’” Garner explained. “Find scientific evidence that matches what I have that says that it’s not good for teenagers, then we’ll chat.” Her eldest child, she said, is actually grateful for the restriction.
Matthew McConaughey and his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey, took a slower approach when they allowed their son, Levi, to join Instagram at 15. The decision came only after lengthy conversations about what he’d encounter there. And it included conditions and ongoing dialogue rather than unrestricted access.
HGTV’s Ben and Erin Napier went a step beyond their own household. In 2023, they co-founded a nonprofit called Osprey, which stands for Old School Parents Raising Engaged Youth. The organization targets parents of kids in kindergarten through 6th grade. They help by finding other families in their schools or neighborhoods who want to keep their children off social media through high school graduation. Then those families make a pledge together. Creating a built-in social circle of kids who are all growing up the same way.
Erin wrote on Instagram that her friends with smartphone-free middle schoolers had watched their children get left out socially, even though “research tells us social media is as addictive and destructive for developing brains as any drug.” Osprey’s answer is to solve the isolation problem before it starts. If enough families commit while their kids are still young, no single child has to be the odd one out.
The Usage Reality
The numbers explain why so many parents are worried. According to a 2023 advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General, up to 95% of teenagers between 13 and 17 use social media. And more than a third report using it “almost constantly.” That kind of engagement would be concerning enough if kids were at least waiting until the recommended age to sign up, but they’re not. Nearly 40% of children between 8 and 12 are already on these platforms. Despite 13 being the standard minimum age most require.
The teenagers who are old enough to be there are spending more than three hours per day on social media. Which means the typical kid isn’t occasionally scrolling through posts but dedicating a substantial chunk of their waking hours to these platforms. That time has to come from somewhere. And researchers have found it often displaces sleep, physical activity, and face-to-face interaction with family and friends.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been blunt about what the data tells him. “We’re in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis,” he said when releasing the advisory. He stopped short of declaring the platforms unsafe for all children.
But he explained why he couldn’t call them safe either. “We do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media use is sufficiently safe for them,” he wrote, “especially during adolescence, a particularly vulnerable period of brain development.” The lack of definitive proof that something is harmful is not the same as proof that it’s safe, and Murthy wanted parents to understand the difference.
Developing Brains at Risk
Adolescent brains are structurally different from adult brains, and the American Psychological Association released its own health advisory in 2023 to explain why teenagers respond to social media so differently than their parents do.
The brain’s prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for impulse control and long-term decision making, doesn’t finish maturing until around age 25. But the limbic system, which processes emotions and rewards, develops much earlier. The APA found that brain regions tied to seeking attention, feedback, and peer approval become hypersensitive starting in early adolescence. Typically between ages 10 and 14.
So teenagers feel an intensified need for social validation. While the part of the brain that would help them regulate that need is still under construction. Neuroscientist Laurence Steinberg has compared this to engaging a powerful engine before the braking system is in place, and social media platforms deliver exactly the kind of intermittent rewards this developmental stage craves.
The Surgeon General’s report placed the most sensitive window between ages 10 and 19. When identities and feelings of self-worth take shape. What happens during this period leaves a lasting imprint because the brain is actively wiring itself based on repeated experiences. If those experiences involve constant social comparison, curated highlight reels from peers, and algorithmically served content designed to maximize engagement, the effects don’t wash out when a teenager turns 20.
This is why researchers have moved away from asking whether social media affects teenagers and started asking how much, in what ways, and for whom. The answers depend heavily on when exposure begins and how much time kids spend online during their most formative years.
The Mental Health Connection
The Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory cited studies showing that teenagers who use social media for more than three hours per day face double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms compared to those who use it less. That 3 hour threshold is worth noting. Because the average teen already exceeds it, meaning most young people fall into the higher-risk category by default.
The APA’s advisory recommended routine screening for problematic social media use. The kind that interferes with a teenager’s ability to function day to day. When a teen can’t detach from platforms, hides their usage from parents, or lets social media crowd out sleep and schoolwork, that behavior can signal bigger psychological risk.
Both advisories flagged the connection between social media and body image, particularly for adolescent girls. Content promoting extreme thinness and appearance-based comparisons fuels disordered eating and lower self-esteem. Surgeon General noted that girls face higher exposure to this content than boys.
None of this means every teenager on social media will develop mental health problems. The effects depend on individual vulnerabilities, family support, and the content kids actually encounter. But the population-level data suggest the platforms carry real risks, and both major health authorities considered those risks serious enough to issue formal advisories in the same year. That kind of coordinated warning doesn’t happen often.
Beyond Mental Health
The same features that make these platforms psychologically risky for teenagers, including constant connectivity, private messaging, and the ability to interact with strangers, also create opportunities for predators to reach children directly. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children operates the CyberTipline, which serves as the national reporting mechanism for online child sexual exploitation.
In the first half of 2025 alone, NCMEC received more than 518,000 reports of online enticement. Up from roughly 293,000 during the same period in 2024. That’s a 56% increase in just one year. Reports of child sex trafficking jumped from under 6,000 to nearly 63,000. And financial sextortion cases rose almost 70%, from around 13,800 to over 23,500.
Online enticement happens when an adult uses the internet to target a child for sexual purposes. That can mean grooming a child into sharing explicit images, convincing them to meet in person, or blackmailing a teenager who has already sent photos by threatening to post them publicly unless they send more or pay money.
These crimes happen across every type of platform. Social media apps serve as common entry points, but offenders target children through messaging apps and online games too. NCMEC’s analysis of missing children cases found that offenders typically initiated contact by posing as peers or romantic interests on these platforms. The age gaps between victims and offenders were often extreme. With 41% of cases involving a difference of more than 10 years, and some showing gaps of nearly 50 years.
The AI Escalation
The threat facing children online is evolving faster than most parents realize, and generative AI is driving much of that change. NCMEC began tracking AI-related child exploitation reports in 2023. In the first six months of 2024, the organization received 6,835 of them. During the same period in 2025, that number exceeded 440,000.
The growth reflects a fundamental shift in how these crimes work. Traditional sextortion required a predator to pose as a peer, build trust with a child over time, and eventually convince them to share explicit photos. Once the predator had those images, they would threaten to release them unless the child complied with further demands. The entire scheme depended on the child producing the content being used against them.
Generative AI removes that dependency. Offenders can now take innocent photos of children from parents’ public social media accounts or school websites and use AI tools to create fake explicit images in minutes. The resulting material looks realistic enough for blackmail even though the child never took an inappropriate photo. Some offenders have told victims they used “AI and your data” to fabricate videos. Then threatened to distribute them unless the child paid or sent additional content.
This is why the numbers grew so fast. The barrier to entry dropped, and the pool of potential victims expanded to include any child with a photo online. A parent’s decision to post a birthday photo or first-day-of-school picture now carries risks that didn’t exist a few years ago.
The Sharenting Tension
The AI threat raises uncomfortable questions for parents who share photos of their children online. Research shows that 92% of American children have a digital footprint before their second birthday. Typically starting with ultrasound images or birth announcements posted to social media. By the time kids reach their teens, their parents have often posted more than a thousand photos of them.
This practice is often called sharenting. Creates a digital identity for children who never consented to it and may not even be aware it exists. That identity includes exactly the kind of information that enables fraud and targeting, from full names and birth dates to schools and daily routines. A 2018 projection from Barclays estimated that sharenting would account for two-thirds of identity fraud affecting young people by 2030.
Clarkson has posted photos of River and Remington on her own Instagram over the years. Sharing backstage moments from her Las Vegas residency and her Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony. Most parents who restrict their children’s social media access still maintain their own accounts where they share family moments. So she’s hardly an outlier.
The tension is real. Parents want to celebrate milestones and stay connected with distant relatives, and social media makes that easy. But every post adds to a child’s digital footprint without their input. The same platforms Clarkson considers too dangerous for her children to use are platforms where her children’s faces appear because she chose to put them there. Whether that contradiction undermines her position or simply reflects the difficulty of parenting in a connected world depends on how you weigh the risks on each side.
Read More: 15+ Things You Should Never Post On Social Media
What Parents Can Do
The research doesn’t tell parents exactly what to do, but it does suggest some things work better than others. The APA found that the best outcomes for adolescents come from combining clear limits on social media use with ongoing conversations about what kids encounter online. Restrictions alone aren’t enough, and neither is unlimited access paired with occasional check-ins. Boundaries and dialogue together seem to give young people the structure they need. While building their ability to handle digital spaces as they get older.
That’s essentially what Clarkson described in her People interview. She’s set a firm boundary, but she’s also told her children she’ll listen to their arguments when they’re older. The rule isn’t an arbitrary punishment. But a line she’s holding until her kids can demonstrate they understand what they’re asking for. She’s treating social media access as something to be earned through maturity rather than granted by default at a certain age.
Other parents may draw their lines differently, whether that means allowing supervised access earlier or delaying until high school, like the Napiers. The research doesn’t point to a single correct answer. Because the effects of social media depend on the individual child, their existing vulnerabilities, and the context they’re growing up in.
What the research does suggest is that doing nothing carries costs. Everything we have covered points in the same direction. Social media isn’t neutral ground for young people, and the platforms weren’t built with adolescent well-being in mind. Parents who want to protect their kids have to make active choices, and Clarkson has made hers.
Read More: 7 Major Threats To Be Aware of When Sharing Pictures of Your Kids Online