Kelly Ripa Defends Reading Her Daughter's Social Media Feeds
"My daughter always says she wants more privacy," Ripa said.
— -- Kelly Ripa notes "there was no social media, no distractions like they have now" when she was growing up, but she knows how to keep an eye on her teenage daughter's online activities.
The 44-year-old "Live with Kelly & Michael" host and mother of three said if her 13-year-old daughter, Lola, wants privacy, she's going to have to document her life in an old-school kind of way, not on Twitter or Instagram.
"My daughter always says she wants more privacy, and I respect that," she told People magazine. "I said, 'If you want to keep a diary instead of Instagram, then you will have privacy. I will not read your diary, but if you're going to be on Instagram, I'm going to read that, because that's not private. That is social media.' That's how we work it out in our house."
In fact, Ripa said that in her day, "We had one phone, it was in the kitchen, and if we wanted privacy, then we would have to stretch the phone cord as far as it could go down the basement stairs."
Ripa has been honest and upfront as of late about her parenting and how Lola, being a teenage girl, isn't her biggest fan right now.
"I don't think she likes me, but I don't care. I'm like, 'I'm not your friend, I'm your mom,'" Ripa told talk show host Wendy Williams a few weeks back. "I just feel an obligation as her mom to keep her living in the real world. I don't care who you are or what you do, if you're a mom, you're a mom."