'Home Town' star Erin Napier avoids social media's criticism for her children, calls it 'distorted' and 'misguided'
LAUREL, MISSISSIPPI: HGTV's 'Home Town' star Erin Napier does not believe that smartphones and the internet could do any good to the growing phase of a child. Therefore, she is against the idea of providing her kids with a phone. The mother of two believes that the internet can make her kids find "distorted pictures of who they think they need to be."
Erin recently uploaded a picture of her from 11th standard. She captioned the picture with a long note, saying how things were good back then when people had no smartphones. Erin in her Instagram post is seen reading a book while smiling for the camera. The 37-year-old 'Home Town' star wrote, "This was me in 11th grade. Smart phones did not exist." She then described how her life has been as a kid and how she wants her kids' life to be.
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"I loved making art and doing photography with the Canon SLR I bought with my money from making tips playing music at the coffee shop downtown," wrote Erin. She further described taking photos of things she liked, like "an old doorknob in an old house, a Grand Wagoneer parked on the street, the beach at low tide, newly painted toenails, the empty bench in Pinehurst Park before people came downtown." After taking photos she used to get them printed and pasted into her album and later showed them to her friends and family. Erin claimed that they usually encouraged her that made her feel confident about what she was doing. "Feeling confident, not at all worried about if any other girls in my class were into that sort of thing," wrote Erin.
She then addressed the pressure of social media nowadays. People post their artworks, reels, or photos in order to compete with each other. This makes people get pressurized by the fact that other people are doing better and it, therefore, leads to crushing of confidence. Erin addresses the same, "I am so thankful I grew up without the crushing pressure of social media. As a highly sensitive artistic kid, the criticism or silence of “likes” would’ve hurt me deeply." She added, "It would have shaped me into someone, something else. I read once that we should only accept the criticism of people who know us and love us well enough to deliver it gently and in a way that helps instead of hurts."
The star further claims that social media for kids is the "harshest criticism." She claims it to be "worst of all a distorted and broken and misguided kind of critic who sets these young people without their fully developed emotional minds on the wrong path." Erin then talked about one of Kate Winslet's interviews where she addressed how bad social media can be for kids' mental and social growth. Erin further claims in her post that she has made a pact with her friends that none of them will buy their kids smartphones until they are grown. Erin claims the reason, "That way, they can’t say 'but all my friends have one'." The mother of two further kept on slamming smartphones and social media saying, "Is it mean to keep them from communicating with smartphones? I don’t care. I’m also keeping them from finding a distorted picture of who they think they need to be, porn, hate, the criticism of strangers." She wants people to understand that childhood is short and one should enjoy every ounce of it without the fear of getting judged. She ends her note saying, "We’re gonna savor every last second of our girls’ that we can. I bet lots of you feel the same way and have had success and I would love to hear about it!"
Erin has two children with Ben Napier, Helen, and Mae.