In a fascinating interview, Angelina Jolie gave a glimpse into her life with her six children, whom she shares with ex-husband Brad Pitt.
The philanthropist revealed and reassured her millions of fans that despite having internationally famous parents and being raised in a privileged fashion, her children are like most other kids their age. They are very attached to their phones.
The revelations about Maddox, 19, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 12, were made by their mother while having a virtual conversation with Gitanjali Rao.
Rao, a 15-year-old Colorado high school student, recently made headlines by landing on the first cover of TIME magazine’s and Nickelodeon’s Kid of the Year issue.
The teen is a scientist, who has won many awards and accolades for coming up with artificial intelligence technology and apps to find solutions for contaminated drinking water, cyberbullying, opioid addiction, and other social problems that affect people worldwide.
The Colorado teenager revealed to Jolie the beautiful reason why she is working hard to change the world.
She stated: “I was always someone who wanted to put a smile on someone’s face. That was my everyday goal, just to make someone happy. And it soon turned into, How can we bring positivity and community to the place we live? And then when I was in second or third grade, I started thinking about how can we use science and technology to create social change.”
Jolie, a mom of four teenagers and two pre-teens, was mainly intrigued by Rao’s work on cyberbullying. Rao is the brain behind the helpful “AI-enabled chat app and Chrome extension” known as Kindly, which permits users to self-censor or not when they write a post that will be shared on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or other social media platforms.
Rao had this to say about her invention: “You type in a word or phrase, and it’s able to pick it up if it’s bullying, and it gives you the option to edit it or send it the way it is. The goal is not to punish. As a teenager, I know teenagers tend to lash out sometimes. Instead, it gives you the chance to rethink what you’re saying so that you know what to do next time around.”
To which Jolie replied by saying that her children will not let her touch their devices because they want to keep their little secrets away from their mother.
Jolie added: “So you just put it on your kids’ phones? My kids would be like, ‘Don’t touch my phone; I’ll do it myself.'”
The young inventor proceeded more or less by giving Jolie some helpful tips on how to convince her teens and other young people to use the app.
She explained: “But a lot of the teenagers were telling me that, you know, it doesn’t seem like I’m being micromanaged; it seems like I’m being given an opportunity to learn from my mistakes. So that’s what I was super-excited about, that they understood what the goal of it was.”
Jolie seems to be all about her children’s wellbeing.
