By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — For a few hours this week, it felt like the world and all its horrors stopped with one subject taking over the internet: Brooklyn Peltz Beckham.
People feasted on every morsel after the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham dropped six slides on his Instagram Stories accusing his famous parents of planting stories in the media about him, portraying “inauthentic relationships” on social media and trying to ruin his wedding to his wife, Nicola Peltz.
Peltz Beckham launched his broadside with a statement of purpose: “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”
With that, though he didn’t use the term himself, Peltz Beckham entered the fervent discourse shaking Gen Z and their Gen X and Boomer parents: going “no contact,” or dropping those family members deemed too toxic and incapable of change.
In private conversations and very publicly on TikTok, the idea of going “no contact” is debated from all sides. On the one hand are those who choose to drop relationships — often hailed by their peers for choosing themselves over whatever situation led to the fissure. On the other are the parents who have been banished by their children, some expressing confusion, and others finding their own influencer lane in telling their side of the story.
Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell and author of the book “Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them,” told CNN that though there is a heightened awareness about adult children going no contact, thanks in part to social media, there is no actual hard data to show that there has been an increase.
Back in 2020, Pillemer told the Cornell Chronicle he “found that 27% of Americans 18 and older had cut off contact with a family member, most of whom reported that they were upset by such a rift.”
What he now sees at play is that younger people, including Gen Z, are receiving more support on social media when they decide to break with their families, even as their parents struggle to understand the language their kids are using to express why it’s happening, like “gaslighting” and “narcissistic parenting.”
“For one, there’s social media encouragement that has become more acceptable,” Pillemer said. “Two, there’s this kind of disconnect between what some young people seem to expect from the parent-child relationship that is very different from their parents’ understanding of what they were doing.”
No longer, he said, do adult children have to stay connected to their family because “blood is thicker than water” as the younger generation has “less of a feeling that I will live with this relationship if it isn’t fulfilling no matter what.”
When it comes to the Beckhams, the educator said he was reminded of a conversation he had on an episode of the “Sibling Rivalry” podcast, hosted by celebrity siblings Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson, about negotiating family relationships via social media.
“I would say this is not a good way to handle estrangements,” he said “It draws an incredibly powerful line in the sand when you out the entire relationship. And it’s very difficult then, ‘cause those things live forever.”
A celebrity dynasty
Another part of the draw to the Beckham scandal is the behind the scenes glance it gives into a powerhouse celebrity family.
From the love-at-first-sight moment fo