Kylie Kelce on Social Media Boundaries & Advocating for Autism

When Kylie Kelce describes her life these days as “chaos,” it’s not hard to guess why. Sure, she knew she was entering a family of NFL royalty when she married Jason Kelce in 2018, but she couldn’t have imagined this: 2 million Instagram followers, being accosted for photos on date night, and Taylor Swift fan accounts breathlessly awaiting her interactions with the pop star, who began dating Kylie’s brother-in-law, Travis Kelce, last year. (You may have heard?)

As Tayvis-mania progressed, fans became fascinated with the rest of the Kelces, Kylie and matriarch Donna among them. It’s a “crazy situation,” Kylie tells SheKnows, “with us needing to be in the news cycle because people are interested.” But one reason for the fascination around Kylie, specifically, might be how grounded and level-headed she is through it all, whether she’s mingling in a star-studded Super Bowl suite or riffing on her husband’s legendary first-date fail. How does she do it, staying present in this unexpected moment?

For one thing, boundaries. “I don’t have time to really deep dive on the internet,” Kylie explains. While she admits to a bit of scrolling here and there when she needs to veg out, she’s careful not to go too far down the internet rabbit hole.

“I didn’t ask for followers. I don’t really need followers,” Kylie says honestly. “I appreciate that people are following along, and I love that. But at the end of the day, if you don’t want to follow me because you think I’m boring, or I don’t post enough, I can live with that… I’m posting about things that I love or I want to share, and I get to sleep soundly at night knowing that I’m interacting on my social media the way I’d like to.”

That — and she’s just too busy. “A kid is going to scream at me to fill up a water bottle at any moment,” she adds. As a mom of three young daughters — Wyatt, 4, Elliotte, 3, and Bennett, 1 — she just doesn’t have time to get caught up in it all the social media hoopla.

It’s clear that Kylie is one to ration out her time and energy carefully, but one cause she’ll always prioritize is autism awareness. It’s a movement she was introduced to at a young age through a close childhood neighbor, Tim, who had autism. “I was introduced to the autism community without even realizing it,” Kylie says now, and Tim “is still very much in our lives,” she says. “My girls refer to him as Uncle Tim.”

As a college grad, Kylie worked with autistic kids as a classroom instructional aid, and she’s highly involved with the Eagles Autism Foundation as well. Her newest partnership is with HP’s Print Pals, as the tech company offers free printable puppets designed to help neurodivergent children to express themselves through creativity.

For Kylie, getting involved in the project was a no-brainer. “Number one, I love anything that has a positive impact on the neurodiverse community,” she says, “but also, I’m excited to do it with my own kids. It’s giving an opportunity for not only the neurodivergent community, but the neurotypical community, to have an activity to engage with their hands and be creative.”

That’s something Kylie appreciates as summer heat waves approach, especially when it comes to offering non-screen activities for her daughters. “They’re very interested in screens,” she says. “They have tablets, [but] they don’t get them very often, and if they do, it’s for a limited amount of time, only because you can see them sort of get sucked in, where it takes two or three times of saying their name for them to be like, ‘oh gosh, Mom’s talking to me.’”

Luckily, the girls are also into arts and crafts (“if it’s sparkly, even better”) and playing outside, with a competitive streak Kylie “selfishly” hopes will expand into a love of sports. “Whether it’s watching, playing, coaching, whatever, I would be very excited about that,” says Kylie, who played field hockey through college. But like any good parent, she’s leaving that up to them — and they’ve got a few other options. “I don’t think that enough people know that Jason was in competition jazz band!” she says. “So if they end up being musicians, he’s got them covered.”

It’s clear Kylie loves being a mom, but she’s careful not to let it become her entire identity. “I really try my best to make sure that, although I take pride in all of the hats that I get to wear, that I don’t let any single one define me,” she says. “I think that it’s really, really easy to get sucked into motherhood and just let being a mom define you… [but] you don’t have to give up things that you love or are passionate about just because you’re having children or you’re becoming a mother.”

Maybe that’s another way she stays so grounded. Yes, this is a woman who reportedly spent Easter with Taylor Swift and recently gave the commencement address at her alma mater, but she’s also an autism advocate, a mom, a high school field hockey coach; she’s stayed committed to the things she loves. Case in point: a week after Wyatt was born, Coach Kylie strapped the newborn to her chest and headed back out to the field. “I thought it was important for my field hockey girls to see that just because I had a kid, doesn’t mean that I don’t get to coach anymore,” she says. “Now I’m three kids deep, and they’re like, ‘Gosh, she’s still coming back.’”

Kylie wants to show her athletes and her daughters that you can have kids and continue doing things outside of parenting, activities that fulfill you as a person and not just a mom. “I very much try my best,” as Kylie says, “to create a little bit of space to still be myself.”

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