“This was astoundingly incredibly gorgeous!!! I feel a mama pride and she is not even mine!”
R&B singer Usher, born Usher Raymond IV, is opening up about some of the candid conversations he's had with his teenage sons.
In a new interview with TODAY.com, the singer shared how he manages conversations about social media with his two oldest kids, Cinco, 18, and Naviyd, 17.
Usher revealed that his teenage sons often tease him about being an "analog dad."
"They think I'm some sort of lame, like I don't have a life," he joked with the outlet.
As “analog” as he may be, he still makes it a priority to engage in conversations about social media with his sons.
"These types of things stimulate a certain dialogue, and that's the point,” he shared with TODAY.com. “I want people to talk to each other. I'm taking a very savvy technical thing and getting back to a very important analog activity: talking to each other."
While getting offline and connecting with others in real life is essential, Usher also believes that social media can be a great tool to help kids broaden their perspectives.
"I don't think that it's bad for your children to be exposed to the world that they're living in,” he shared. “You don't want them to be oblivious and wide-eyed when they walk into the world."
Usher and his two oldest sons have also partnered with Instagram for their “Carversations” video series, which involves going for drives together and chatting about all things social media.
“Screenagers these days, it’s just really… it’s the online age, you know?” Naviyd joked after Usher told the boys they would need to put away their phones in the car while they went for a drive.
During their drive, Usher admitted that he can definitely see the advantage of using social media to network for your career as you get older.
“I had to wait for people to come out of a nightclub and then sing for them in order for them to recognize my talent and hopefully want to sign me as an artist. Like, y’all got Instagram so y’all don’t need to go to a record company,” he explained to his sons.
They then chatted about Instagram’s new “teen accounts” feature, which offers protections and parental controls on teen’s accounts, and setting screen time limits.
“Let’s look at it from the vantage point of making certain that you guys can prioritize the things that you need to, like homework,” Usher said. “You should only have so much time to even be active–right?–online. Because I want you to do active things like to go outside to, you know, actively engage in the world that you’re in.”
