Josh Gad Reveals Why He and Wife Ida Darvish Are Using Snapchat to Communicate with Their Teen Daughter (Exclusive)
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03/19/2025 02:52 PM
The couple is parents to daughters Isabelle, 11, and Ava, 14
Jamie McCarthy/WireImage
Josh GadJosh Gad knows how to build a snowman – and how to successfully Snapchat his two daughters.
When the Frozen actor's two daughters — Isabella Eve, 11, and Ava Tanya, 14, who he shares with longtime wife Ida Darvish — started pestering him about letting them use social media, Gad admits he was hesitant at first.
"We are the parents who are screamed at every day of the week by our children saying, 'Why can't you just be like everyone else's parents and let us have unlimited screen time and phone time?' " Gad jokes to PEOPLE. "But the truth is I think we're both aware of the fact that this technology is addictive, clinically proven to be addictive, and at the same time unavoidable."
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Josh Gad and wife Ida Darvish attend the premiere of "The Wedding Ringer" at TCL Chinese Theatre on January 6, 2015 in Hollywood, California.Related: Josh Gad Has a 'Frozen' Singalong with His Daughters amid 'Depressing' Hot Chocolate-Making Session
The actor explains that he didn't want to isolate his daughters from their friends by restricting them from a way to communicate, but he and his wife weren't comfortable with some of the social media apps that were on the market. Until they found Snapchat.
"When we determined that her friends were using [Snapchat] as their primary source of communication, my wife saw that Snapchat had a family center with controlled settings," Gad admits, referencing his older daughter Ava. "And it immediately gave both parties, my daughter and us, the reassurances that we need to allow her to use this as her primary source of communication."
While he says he and his wife trust their kids "implicitly," Gad didn't trust other people on the Internet who might not have their best interests at heart.
"So any ability to monitor and hopefully prevent that kind of unwanted communication, I think that it should be the focus of every single one of these services," he continues.
"And to Snapchat's credit, they really put their money where their mouth is, and have created and continue to adjust this service that parents like us, who are skeptical of allowing our kids to jump onto these platforms, we can breathe easier at night knowing that we are in control of the destiny of what this looks like."
Gad says that his entire family has gotten onboard with Snapchat — even his 76-year-old mother.
"My niece would never text with my 76-year-old mother, and my mom got so frustrated and she kept trying to text her, and I think she learned the word ghosting off of their attempts at communication," he jokes. "So my mom learned about Snapchat and downloaded it, and now my niece and her communicate all the time."
The Book of Mormon alum says Snapchat's been a "really fun form of engagement" for his family and notes that they still can enforce screen time with their daughters.
"We're sort of like, when you've got your 20 to 30 minutes, use it. If you want to use it Snapping silly pictures with friends, and we're aware of what you're Snapping, and not that we creep on you all the time, but we make sure that no unfiltered things are coming through, not necessarily going out, I'm all for it," explains Gad.
"I'm like, 'Yes, have fun. I get it. I know that that's how you want to talk to your friends,'" he adds.
The star says he knows he needs to work on his Snapchat skills since his daughters now consider texting "archaic."
"I now know it's an inevitability that I'm going to need to up my own Snapping because I see my daughters quickly losing a desire to communiSate with me in other traditional ways, like the dinner table," says Gad. "So I'm like, 'Okay, let's snap about your day back and forth, if that will allow me to understand what the hell you did at school today."
Although his younger daughter doesn't yet have a phone to Snap with her sister, Gad says his girls are still "inseparable."
"They're inseparable and yet they fight all the time," he jokes. "It's the craziest thing. It's like they love each other to the point that they want to hurt each other."
