The actress stars in the upcoming Apple TV+ series, 'The Last Thing He Told Me.'
Jennifer Garner is holding her ground when it comes to her kids and social media.
The actress sat down with Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie on Today to plug her upcoming Apple TV+ series, The Last Thing He Told Me, in which she plays stepmom to a brooding Angourie Rice. Talk quickly turned to her real-life role as a mom to Violet, 17, Seraphina, 14, and Samuel, 11 -- whom she shares with ex-husband Ben Affleck.
"My teens are pretty great," she gushed, acknowledging that parenting teenagers comes with its own challenges. "Different scenario, different friction, but I am familiar with being deeply embarrassing, yes."
Kotb and Guthrie, whose own children are younger, praised Garner's decision to keep her kids away from social media.
"I just said to my kids, 'Tell me, show me the articles that prove that social media is good for teenagers and then we'll have the conversation,'" Garner said. "Find scientific evidence that matches what I have that says that it's not good for teenagers, then we'll chat."
As for her kids' reaction to the rule, Garner said, "My eldest is grateful."
"We'll see," she continued. "I mean, it's a long haul. I have a couple more to go. So, just knock on wood, we'll see if I really hang in there."
As the hosts pondered how long they could keep their own kids from going "down that road," Garner was matter-of-fact in her advice. "Just don't," she said.
Garner is days away from ringing in her 51st birthday on April 17, which she says she'll celebrate with her family.
"I always try to do something to mark the beginning of the year as, put something good out," she shared. "So I'm gonna plant trees. Gonna plant trees with my kids."
At the series' red carpet premiere earlier this month, Garner joked with ET about her kids thinking she's extra.
"I think my children live feeling that way," Garner quipped. "They would tattoo it. They don't even need to say it. It is fact."
Garner stars in the TV adaptation of Laura Dave's bestselling novel as Hannah, a woman who teams up with her resistant teenage stepdaughter, Bailey (Rice), to find out her husband's (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) secrets after he goes missing.
Garner, who launched an impressive letter writing campaign to score the role, bonded with daughter Seraphina over the book.
"I read the book with my middle child and... bedtime went out the window until it was finished," Garner told ET. "We were compelled to keep reading. It's so propulsive, the read, because the stakes could not be higher. They are turned on a dime again and again and again. And in the middle of it is this very tender love story between a woman and her stepdaughter, and kind of the idea of becoming a parent."
The Last Thing He Told Me debuts April 14 on Apple TV+.
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