Kirsten Dunst is on the same page as Penélope Cruz and Paris Hilton when it comes to screen time and kids
Kirsten Dunst is strict about her children's use of electronics.
She told Variety that her sons don't own iPads and that her family isn't allowed to use phones at restaurants.
"I'm not raising a kid that can't have conversations at the table," Dunst said.
Kirsten Dunst is strict about her children's use of electronics and is raising them to lead an analog lifestyle.
In an interview with Variety, the 41-year-old actor said that she tries to keep her kids off screens when they're at home.
"We've got record players," Dunst told Variety. "We're just not a 'Siri, play whatever' household."
Dunst and her husband, actor Jesse Plemons, have two sons together, Ennis Howard, 5, and James Robert, 2.
The actor also shared that her children don't own iPads and that no one in the family is allowed to use phones while eating out.
"If they want to use an iPad on the plane, it's Dad's iPad. And we're not phone-at-restaurant kind of people," Dunst said. "I'm not raising a kid that can't have conversations at the table."
Dunst isn't the only celebrity mom who is concerned about the screen time that her kids are getting.
In January, actor Penélope Cruz also shared her concerns about letting her kids use social media in an interview with Elle.
"It's so easy to be manipulated, especially if you have a brain that is still forming," Cruz said. "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."
In March, during a panel at the "A Day of Unreasonable Conversation" summit, Paris Hilton said she hopes her kids won't grow up to be as addicted to social media as she is, adding that she wants them to "live a world outside of social media and being on their phone all the time."
Even tech execs like Bill Gates and Sundar Pichai limited their children's access to screens.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told The New York Times in 2017 that he limits his family's screen time by making the TV difficult to access. Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft, didn't let his kids get cellphones until they were 14.
On average, children in the US between 8 and 12 spend between four to six hours a day watching or using screens, while teens can spend up to 9 hours, per the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, or AACAP.
While it's hard to put an exact number on how much screen time is too much, experts have guidelines around recommended screen time based on age group.
For children aged between 2 to 5 years old — like Dunst's children — the AACAP recommends limiting screen time to one hour on weekdays and three hours on weekend days.
Experts say that it is possible not to raise iPad kids. Dr. Jonathan Maynard, a pediatrician with Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, California, told Business Insider that parents can manage their children's screen time by letting them participate in fun activities that don't involve digital devices and creating screen-free zones around the house.
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