Penélope Cruz won't give her kids phones, fears they'll be 'manipulated': 'A cruel experiment on children'

Two years ago, Spanish actress Penélope Cruz admitted that she felt "part of a minority" in wanting to shield her children from social media. With her kids now 10 and 12, Cruz is reiterating her stance and sharing that her children still "don't even have phones."

"It’s so easy to be manipulated, especially if you have a brain that is still forming," she told Elle Magazine for its February 2024 issue. "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."

Cruz shares son Leo, 12 and daughter Luna, 10, with fellow actor Javier Bardem.

PENELOPE CRUZ: MOTHERHOOD CHANGED MY LIFE

In 2021, the Oscar-winning actress shared similar sentiments with CBS Sunday Morning. "I'm very tough with technology, for example with my kids, we can watch movies sometimes, or some cartoons. How can I not let them watch movies if that has been some incredible moments of [my] happiness since I was a little girl? But not phones until they are much older and no social media until at least 16. I really see that as protecting mental health. But I seem to be part of a minority," she suggested.

"I have a very strange relationship with social media," she continued. "Where I use very little of it in a very careful way. There is something that is not making sense, and it's especially affecting younger generations. I feel really bad for the ones that are teenagers now. It's almost [as] if the world was doing some kind of experiment on them. 'Oh, let's see what happens if you expose a 12-year-old to that much technology.' "

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Fiercely protective of her kids, Cruz won't expand on their interests. In her interview with Elle, Cruz was reluctant to say if her children would follow in the creative footsteps of their successful parents. "It’s for them to decide if they are going to have a job that is more exposed to the public or not. They can talk about that when they’re ready," she told the outlet.

Cruz, 39, adores motherhood; she recognizes the significance of the role. "Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted kids. But I knew I wanted them older. I wanted to wait until I felt I was ready. I was sure it would be the most important thing I would do in my life," the actress explained. 

She welcomed her first child at 36, and the second at 39.

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Cruz has often been cast as maternal characters. In the upcoming biopic "Ferrari," she plays bereaved mother Laura Ferarri. 

"At my age, 80 percent of the characters that I play will be about motherhood or divorce or abandonment or characters who didn’t want to have children or couldn’t or who lost children. I’ve played mothers since I was very young," she said. 

Many of her films have been with Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, whom she believes saw her nurturing side before she had children of her own to nurture.

"Pedro always saw me as a mother," she explained. "We have known each other since I was 17. He would watch me going to talk to strangers just to see their babies. He always saw that strong, inevitable instinct in me, and I saw him see it."