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Celebrity

06th Mar 2017

Holly Willoughby explains why she keeps her children away from social media

She talks a lot of sense.

Cathy Donohue

You can see her point of view.

Holly Willoughby has three children, Harry (7), Belle (5) and Chester (2) and in a recent interview, the TV presenter explained why she keeps them out of the public eye and away from her social media channels, for the most part.

Speaking to The Evening Standard, Holly explained that it’s a way of protecting her kids, especially considering how dangerous social media has become in recent years.

The 36-year-old said that cyber bullying is a ‘huge problem’ and that times have changed massively since she was a child.

Holly went on to say:

“When we were kids we’d go home and at least we’d have hours where nobody could get to you and you could just regather your thoughts”.

“Now it’s just not like that and we’ve seen how serious it gets: children taking their own lives”.

Although the mother of three shared a rare snap of her and her children recently, you can’t see their faces, which makes complete sense given her feelings on the subject.

She also said that keeping the “lines of communication” open with her children is key and that although her children are still too young to know much about social media, she’s trying to prepare herself for how things might change a couple of years down the line.

Although Holly has her reservations about social media, she also said that banning it isn’t ideal either as this automatically means the child is treated differently by their peers.

“If you’re the one who’s not allowed because your mum doesn’t let you, you become that figure of difference and that’s when the problems start.

“That’s how they communicate and you have to remember also that those platforms are also used for really good ways of socialising for teenagers or older children so I don’t think you can hold back the tide, I think that would be very naive as a parent”.

You can see the interview in full here.