"She wanted me to be with her. It was her day, so this is secondary.”
Jenna Bush Hager isn’t scared to say “no” to her 12-year-old daughter.
The 43-year-old “TODAY With Jenna & Friends” host shares three children — daughters Mila, 12, and Poppy, 9, and son Hal, 5 — with her husband, Henry Chase Hager.
And while she says she’s not a “super strict” parent, she admitted that phones are off the table for now.
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“I have a 12-year-old and she does not have a phone. And she won’t for a bit,” Bush Hager revealed to TikTok star Tinx on the May 8 episode of her “Open Book with Jenna” podcast.
“And she definitely won’t have social media,” she added.
Bush Hager goes on to explain that she “believes in conversation” and believes in her daughter’s right to have a voice, but — unlike many parents today, she says — she doesn’t shy away from saying “no.”
“We’ve given (Mila) a boundary that she’s known about for a long time,” Bush Hager continued.
Her comments come nearly two years after she shared a similar sentiment during a 2023 episode of “Today with Hoda & Jenna,” where she discussed the boundary with guest actor Matthew McConaughey.
"I have a 10-year-old, she won't be getting even a phone for a long time,” Bush Hager said on the show, per People.
McConaughey, who shares three kids with his wife Camila, followed a similar path with his oldest.
"Oh he wanted it early on — probably when was 12, definitely 13, definitely when he was 14,” the actor said of his now-16-year-old son, Levi. “And we waited until he was 15.”
When that time came, McConaughey taught his son a very important lesson about social media.
"So the main thing was this: go live your life, Levi and if you're doing something you think is worth sharing, then share it,” he said. “Don't wake up every morning thinking, 'What can I do that will be a good share?'"
Bush Hager explains why she’s against cell phones at an early age
While speaking to Tinx on her podcast, Bush Hager elaborated on her decision to say “no” to cell phones.
The “Today” show host recalled the very first story she did when she returned to work after giving birth to Mila — and it regarded research a doctor unveiled about parents spending too much time on their phone.
“The words that they were using were things like, ‘I’m not interesting. I’m not enough,’” she said of how kids felt with their parents “always staring down” instead of “looking in their eyes.”
“And this was before a real rush of young people having electronics,” she adds on her podcast. “It was based on what parents were conveying.”
According to a 2023 study from Common Sense Media, shared by Fox News, a “whopping 97% of kids used their phones during school hours, while nearly 60% used them overnight.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that 53% of children have a smartphone by age 11 and 95% of teens ages 13 to 17 years have direct access to a cell phone.
According to the NIH, screen time has been linked to obesity, sleep problems, depression and anxiety.
It also “diminishes the quantity and quality of interactions between children and their parents, resulting in fewer chances for the child to practice and develop their language abilities,” the report adds.
As Bush Hager puts it, “we’re not servicing our children in a fair way” by allowing them to spend time on their phones, as opposed to reading or staying active outdoors.
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“But I also didn't have a smartphone until like my twenties,” she admitted.
