Savannah Guthrie revealed that she “100 percent” approves of parents’ “snooping” on their kids’ mobile devices — though she’d prefer to reframe the debate.
“First of all, I don’t like the word ‘snooping.’ I think it has a negative connotation,” Guthrie, 53, revealed during the Wednesday, August 20, edition of Today With Jenna & Friends. “[I’d rather use the terms] ‘looking,’ ‘parenting.’”
Guthrie and cohost Jenna Bush Hager were discussing a Wall Street Journal article from July that makes “the case for snooping on your kid’s phone.” The op-ed encouraged parents to keep track of their child’s mobile passcode and argued that actively monitoring a kid or teenager’s mobile content can help keep them out of trouble.
As the Today duo discussed the moral complexities of “snooping,” Guthrie revealed that she drew up a contract for her 10-year-old daughter, Vale, to sign when she got her first iCloud account. (Guthrie and her husband, Michael Feldman, also share 8-year-old son Charley.)
“Our kids are little. I mean, maybe it’s different once it’s 16, 17, 18, I don’t know. I’m paying for that phone,” Guthrie pointed out. “My kids don’t have a device and God willing, they’ll never have one. But for example, my daughter got a little personal iCloud address and I actually drafted a contract for her to sign.”
Bush Hager, 43, approved of Guthrie’s approach, revealing that she’d done something similar with own children. (Bush Hager and her husband, Henry Hager, share three children: Mila, 11, Poppy, 9, and Hal, 5.)
“You’ve sent me that contract so I could also put some of my own legal jargon on it for my own kids,” she reminded Guthrie.
Guthrie recalled not wanting to overwhelm Vale with the terms of their contract, so she tried to keep the document as basic as possible.
“It was basically like, ‘I know that Mommy and Daddy love me more than anything in the world. I know that Mommy and Daddy can read my texts. I know that I will not put in a text anything that I wouldn’t want Grandma and Grandpa to see, that I wouldn’t want to see on the front page of The New York Times, blah, blah, blah,’” she clarified. “But she knows that I reserve the right to look at her texts.”
The Today reporter then admitted, “Now, since she’s not watching, I really never do [look at them]. But I trust her.”
Wednesday’s Today With Jenna & Friends was a rare opportunity for viewers to watch Guthrie candidly discuss her family. Speaking exclusively to Us Weekly in February, Guthrie admitted that she tries to walk a fine line with how much she reveals about her family on air.
“[My husband is] a super good sport about it,” she told Us. “If I was on [Today With Jenna & Friends], I’d probably be saying all kinds of things about my husband! We don’t do as much talking about our personal lives on our show. [Michael] doesn’t love when I talk about his snoring. He rolls his eyes.”
She went on, “Now my kids are old enough that [they could] hear from a friend, ‘Oh, your mom said this about you,’ so I try to be careful — my daughter’s at an age where everything is embarrassing. My mere existence is mortifying.”
Today With Jenna & Friends airs on NBC weekdays at 10 a.m. ET.
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