How Victoria Beckham is teaching her children to deal with online negativity
Words by Ally Head
She's best known as one of the five Spice Girls and for her successful career transition from pop star to fashion designer—she stole the show at this year's AW20 Fashion Week, in all the right ways. So well known, in fact, that you often forget that Victoria Beckham is also a working mum with four kids, Brooklyn, 19, Romeo, 17, Cruz, 15, and Harper, 8.
As one of the most famous celebrity couples in the world, the Beckhams (and their children) have lived most of their lives in the public eye, and as a result, have fans and followers from all over the world (the five online have 105 million Instagram followers alone).
Now that the three boys are old enough to be on social media, Victoria has opened up about how she's teaching them to deal with the negativity they're often at the receiving end of.
Talking to CNBC's Tania Bryer after her fashion show on Sunday, Victoria admitted that she finds thinking about the repercussions that can come from children being on social media 'a little bit scary,' especially as a parent.
'We're a really close family. The children sometimes get judged, for things they might like or they might post and people are watching everything that they do. They don’t know, they're children, you know.'
The fashion designer continued: 'I think that can be a little bit scary. But you know, it's something relatively new for so many of us, so we're all still learning.'
So how is she taking steps to ensure her kids stay safe online, in a world where trolling and negativity are becoming more and more commonplace? She said: 'We just try to not focus on that and stay very positive.'
Hear, hear. In light of the tragic death of presenter Caroline Flack this weekend and reports circulating about her depression stemming from negative trolling online, remember: in a world where you can be anything, be kind.
By actively encouraging their kids not to focus on any negative comments they receive online and instead, use their social platforms to spread positivity, the Beckhams are helping to set an examples and spread positivity online.
Take Romeo's TikTok account, for example, where he shares funny videos of him, his girlfriend and his friends dancing to his 280k followers. One recent video, in which he shows mum Victoria dancing to the Spice Girls track 'Spice Up Your Life', got 4.1 million views. Not bad.
