But Shakira’s two sons are growing up differently.
Milan and Sasha, the children of global music star Shakira and former footballer Gerard Piqué, do not have personal phones. 📱❤️
In a world where children can spend hours scrolling through social media, watching endless videos, reading comments and comparing themselves with people they have never met, Shakira has chosen to put some very clear boundaries around technology in her sons’ lives.
During an April 2026 television interview with Henar Álvarez in Spain, Shakira spoke openly about the way she manages technology at home.
Her sons have no personal phones.
Their access to an iPad is also carefully limited, generally to about an hour on Saturday mornings.
And there is one platform they are not allowed to use at all:
YouTube.
For Shakira, however, these rules are not simply about preventing her children from spending too much time staring at screens.
There is a deeper reason.
She wants Milan and Sasha to grow up understanding that their happiness should not depend on the attention, approval or opinions of strangers online.
That lesson may be especially important for children growing up in a famous family.
Their parents are known around the world. Their names appear in newspapers, magazines, television programs and social-media posts every day.
One search could bring up thousands of opinions about their family.
Shakira doesn’t want her sons building their identities around those opinions.
She has encouraged them not to believe everything they read on social media. She also doesn’t want them searching for themselves online—or searching for her, or even their father.
Her reasoning is remarkably simple:
Why would they need to?
Instead of allowing strangers on the internet to tell them who they are, she wants them to discover that for themselves.
There is something particularly powerful about that idea.
The internet can make a person feel as though everyone is watching.
A photograph receives comments.
A video receives criticism.
A stranger forms an opinion.
Someone else compares your appearance, your success, your family or your life with somebody else’s.
And when a child is still learning who they are, that constant stream of outside judgment can become difficult to separate from their own sense of worth.
Shakira appears determined to give her sons some distance from that world while they are still young.
Interestingly, she also tries to follow a similar principle herself.
She has said that she doesn’t normally search her own name online.
Rather than constantly checking what strangers are saying about her, she chooses what deserves her attention.
And perhaps that philosophy comes from years of living under an extraordinary amount of public scrutiny.
Shakira has spent decades being watched, photographed, discussed and judged.
She knows firsthand how quickly public attention can become overwhelming.
But her approach to motherhood has not been limited to technology.
When her sons were younger, she made a conscious decision to put part of her career aside so she could be present for their childhood.
It was not necessarily the easiest professional choice.
Much of her international career had long been connected to the United States, and because she wasn’t able to live there during those years, she acknowledged that she missed professional opportunities that could have been significant.
There were projects she could have pursued.
Places she could have been.
Career opportunities she could have accepted.
But when asked whether she regretted putting those opportunities aside for her children, her answer was clear.
She didn’t regret choosing them.
And that may be one of the most revealing parts of her story.
Because fame encourages people to chase the next achievement.
The next song.
The next tour.
The next award.
The next headline.
But childhood doesn’t wait.
A child is only 5 once.
Only 8 once.
Only 11 once.
There are moments that cannot be postponed until the next tour ends or the next opportunity comes around.
Shakira chose to be present for some of those moments.
Today, she is once again performing around the world and continuing her hugely successful career.
But some of the years when she could have been chasing bigger opportunities were spent somewhere much quieter.
At home.
With her children.
And perhaps that is why her approach to technology makes so much sense.
She understands the value of attention—and the danger of giving too much of it away.
Her sons may eventually have phones.
They may eventually use social media.
They will almost certainly encounter the enormous digital world that surrounds them.
But for now, Shakira is giving them something that can be surprisingly difficult to find in the modern world:
Space.
Space to grow without constantly checking who is watching.
Space to make mistakes without thousands of strangers commenting.
Space to discover what makes them happy without an algorithm telling them what they should want.
And most importantly, space to understand that their worth does not come from likes, views, followers or other people’s opinions.
Millions of people may know their parents.
Millions may know their names.
But Shakira appears to want Milan and Sasha to learn something far more important first:
They don’t need millions of strangers to tell them who they are.
They need to discover that for themselves. ❤️📱
