How They Used Me to Cover Up the Truth, The Dark Reality of Growing Up as Jaden Smith.

To the world, I was always “the different one.” The kid who wore skirts, dropped cryptic tweets about time and trees, said school was a lie, and wanted to be emancipated before I was old enough to vote. Everyone thought I was just trying to stand out, but what they didn’t see was that I was just trying to survive.

Growing up in my family Will and Jada Smith meant cameras, expectations, and pressure from day one. We looked perfect on the outside, but on the inside, things weren’t always what they seemed. I learned early on that the image had to be protected, no matter what it cost us personally.

And then came the Red Table Talk. The entire world watched my parents sit across from each other, discussing the fact that my mom had been in an “entanglement” with August Alsina—someone who wasn’t just some random person to me. He was someone I’d brought into our lives.

Someone I had trusted. I didn’t find out before it aired. I found out like the rest of the world—watching it unfold in real time. The internet laughed, my dad became a meme, and I went completely numb.

I didn’t post anything. I didn’t speak out. But that didn’t stop the media from shifting the spotlight—right back to me. Just like always.

“Jaden Smith is acting strange again.” “Jaden tweets about dimensions.” “Jaden wears a skirt to prom.” I became the distraction, like I always had, so people didn’t have to focus on what was really happening in our family.

That was the unspoken pattern. When things got too real behind closed doors, they let me be misunderstood in public. It was easier to paint me as “the weird one” than to address the dysfunction within the family. And I played along because I didn’t know any different. Until it started breaking me.

When I asked for emancipation at 15, people thought I was entitled. But I wasn’t trying to run from privilege—I was trying to escape a house that expected silence over truth.

I love my parents. I always will. But love doesn’t mean pretending everything was okay. It doesn’t erase the fact that I was used to protect an image. That I was sacrificed to maintain a brand. And for years, I let it happen.

But now, I’m saying what I should’ve said a long time ago:
They used me to cover up the truth.

If you’ve ever been the one to carry the emotional weight for a family, to act out because no one was listening, or to be labeled as the “problem” just because you were honest—then you already know how this feels.