Raising kids in the age of social media isn't easy — even for celebrity parents. Actor Joey Lawrence is dad to three daughters, and even though he’s a celebrity, he has the same concerns that a lot of us share when it comes to our children and their safety. Now that his oldest children are entering their teen years, as a former teen star, Joey is thinking about the social pressures that teens face. With the surge in popularity of social media amongst teens, everything is scarier for parents, and Joey is opening up about those fears.
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Joey longs for a simpler time for teens and parents.
"I think it's the first time in history where things are fundamentally different to the way they were when we were growing up," Joey said in a recent interview with People. "In the '80s and '90s you had your answering machine, your Walkman, which was a little different to your parents. But now you have social media, the internet, and it's changed everything."
He says that parents now have to worry about 'the whole world' because of social media.
Joey uses social media himself, and he frequently posts Instagram Reels with his younger brothers Matthew and Andy. Even so, he admitted he's not really a big fan of the apps, especially for his daughters: Liberty, 13, and Charleston, 17.
“It's the whole world you have to worry about now,” he says of social media.
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He isn't afraid of being a 'helicopter parent' if it means he can keep his daughters safe.
"Everybody's got a platform and you can bully from near or far," he said. "It's very tough to navigate as a young person through these times. Everyone wants to be glorified. Fame feels accessible to everybody. And they're presenting this life that doesn't really exist."
Because of his many years in the limelight, Joey uses his experience to offer his daughters perspective.
"I don't mind being a helicopter parent, as annoying as that is," he shared. "You have to be really consistent and beat that consistent drum and hope that most of what you say somehow gets absorbed into their brains."
Joey is also incredibly worried about drugs and drug culture.
He also revealed that one of his other big fears about raising teens in this current culture is drugs, specifically fentanyl.
"You see horror stories every day," he said. "These kids are buying their weed over Snapchat and it can be laced with fentanyl. There's really crazy stuff going on.
"I tell my teenage daughter, she's going to all these senior parties and is getting ready to go to college, I tell her you can't [take anything]," he added. "I don't care if they say it's from a dealer, you just can't do it because they're lacing things with fentanyl on purpose — you eat a gummy bear and then you're dead."
He tries to be a present parent and offer his daughters some additional perspective.
Joey understands that social media is the "world in which they live" now, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t struggle with how to protect his daughters.
"You don't want them to live in a fishbowl because they're eventually going to be exposed to this, and if they don't know about [the bad stuff] or aren't savvy about it, they could be subject to being victims," he shared with People. "I feel like we're parenting in this very brackish period which has created a lot of tumult, in my personal opinion."
