Violet Affleck has always been an advocate for change.
The eldest daughter of now exes Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner initially fought for her own privacy as a child of high-profile celebrities. After becoming aware of the paparazzi interest in her family at a very young age, Violet, born in 2005, played a part in getting a bill passed in 2013 that outlawed photos of children taken without permission.
Violet, who was in kindergarten at the time, offered to share her perspective with authorities and other celebrity parents.
As Garner told The Hollywood Reporter in a 2021 interview, “Violet’s hyper-articulate — she is Ben Affleck’s daughter, and she stood up on a chair in a little velvet dress, with her hair a bit back and her glasses on and she didn’t say her R’s right, and she said: ‘We didn’t ask for this. We don’t want these cameras, they’re scary. The men are scary, they knock each other over and it’s hard to feel like a kid when you’re being chased.’”
Violet was keenly aware of the effects of fame at a young age, having been chased in and out of schools alongside her siblings Seraphina and Samuel, and kicked off a soccer team because of the circus their parents would create.
But now, she’s using whatever notoriety she has to try and better the planet as a public health and climate change activist.
The Yale University student has attended White House state dinners and United Nations assemblies to advocate for clean air and the prevention of long COVID after she herself suffered from a post-viral condition.
Read more about Violet’s activism below:
Violet Attended a State Dinner with Her Mom
In December 2022, on Violet’s 17th birthday, she attended the state dinner, hosted by former President Joe Biden and former first lady Dr. Jill Biden. The White House event honored French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, and the United States’ alliance with France amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and tensions with China.
“The White House State Dinner last night felt like a dream,” Garner shared via Instagram at the time. “Thank you to @potus and @flotus for including me in the magical and elegant evening celebrating the friendship between US/ France with gracious President @emmanuelmacron and First Lady Macron. My lovely date and I will remember it always. ✨.”
Violet Fought for Mask Mandates Following the Pandemic
In July 2024, Violet appeared at an L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting to discuss COVID-19 precautionary measures and proposed mask bans.
During the public discourse, Violet took the opportunity to speak about the importance of preventative care and spread mitigation after facing health issues due to a post-viral condition.
“I contracted a post-viral condition in 2019,” Violet said. “I’m OK now, but I saw first-hand that medicine does not always have answers to the consequences of even minor viruses. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown that into sharper relief.”
Although she did not go into the details of her own condition, Violet went on to say that the effects of long COVID are “devastating” and could be improved with more testing, medication and mask availability. She asked that the county not impose a mask ban “for any reason” in order to protect the public.
Violet Penned a Research Essay for Yale’s Paper
During her freshman year at Yale University, Violet published a research paper in the school’s Global Health Review in May 2025.
In the piece titled “A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles,” Violet wrote about her experience with the devastating L.A. wildfires in January 2025 and how the tragedy related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room,” Violet began the paper. “She was shell-shocked, astonished at the scale of destruction in the neighborhood where she raised myself and my siblings. I was surprised at her surprise: as a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of generation Z, my question had not been whether the Palisades would burn but when.”
Violet went on to say that instead of focusing on “comprehensive clean-air infrastructure and accessible healthcare,” our country abandoned “disabled and chronically ill people” despite the continued presence of infections and the risk of long COVID.
“Our bewildered response to crises like the L.A. fires tell us we may still be accustomed to addressing the climate crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic: as a question of how fast we can get back around to pretending like the problem is gone,” she wrote.
Violet Addressed the United Nations
Violet delivered a speech in support of mask mandates at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025.
The youth advocate spoke out in favor of clean air and masking to prevent the transmission of long COVID at the U.N.’s headquarters in New York City.
“We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future,” Violet said while wearing a K95 mask. “But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”
Violet went on to call out adults for “the relentless beat of back to normal, ignoring, downplaying, and concealing both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of long COVID. … Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us.”
She claimed that long COVID has “surpassed asthma as the most common chronic illness in children in five years and under,” before stating that she is “terrified” school-aged children who “will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion, who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore and imagine” after being infected over the years.
“I am furious on their behalf,” she continued. “It is a neglect of the highest order to look children in the eyes and say, ‘We knew how to protect you and we didn’t do it. We have access to a technology to prevent airborne disease, something that millions of our ancestors and millions of people around the world today would kill for, and we refuse to use it.’”
In conclusion, she compared airborne illness to public smoking, saying, “We can recognize filtered air as a human right, as intuitively as we do filtered water. We can create clean air infrastructure that is so ubiquitous and so obviously necessary, so that tomorrow’s children don’t even know why we need it.”