Shutterstock
Ben Affleck Reveals Daughter Violet, 14, ‘Teases’ Him Over His Use of Emojis and Group Chats
What are dads for if you can’t push their buttons? Ben Affleck revealed the adorable — and totally relatable — reason his 14-year-old daughter, Violet, likes to jokingly badger him over his ability to use technology.
“My daughter is so funny, she teases me,” the Good Will Hunting star, 47, dished while attending the Miami screening of his newest movie The Way Back on Tuesday, February 18, noting he’s “learning a lot” about “everything that’s going on” with social media, texting and the use of emojis, People reported.
“She’s 14 and she’s like ‘Why do they let you on this group chat? You don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t pretend you have any idea what’s going on,'” Ben hilariously explained after Violet found out her famous father was in a group chat with his younger costars.
“Then she’s like, ‘What are they saying on the group chat?'” the Gone Girl actor — who shares Violet, as well as daughter Seraphina, 10, and son Samuel, 7, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner — added. “Which is only appropriate very rarely for my daughter, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s a way to stay in touch. It’s fun.”
As Ben recalled the time when the group chat first began, he dished why he was hoping to be included. “I’m trying to get a little cooler,” the Accountant actor joked while talking alongside costar Melvin Gregg, adding “What is this group chat thing?”
Although Ben is already getting lessons from his tech-savvy teenager, Violet has yet to get permission from her parents to join social media. In fact, the 13 Going on 30 star, 47 — who was married to Ben from 2005 until their divorce was finalized in 2018 — once explained why she isn’t too fond of her daughter getting an Instagram.
“Without even having parents who are well-known, I worry about all kids having to deal with this new pressure. My daughter’s at an all-girl school, and it’s such a huge problem,” Jennifer shared with Katie Couric on her a November 2019 episode of her “Next Question With Katie Couric” podcast. “She’ll occasionally talk to me about getting Instagram, and I can see why because I’m on there and it’s something kind of fun that I do, and I am modeling the opposite of what I want for her to do.”
Jen even dished what it will take in order for Violet to earn her own profile. “I just say, ‘When you can show me studies that say that teenage girls are happier using Instagram than not, then we can have the conversation,'” the doting mom of three explained. “‘But everything you look at, I don’t see anything positive for you out there. You can look at mine when you want to, we can go over it together, but I just don’t see it.'”
