Katy Perry: I’m a victim of social media pressure
Written by admin on 21st January 2018
Katy Perry says she is a “victim” of social media because of society’s pressure to share every move online.
The singer and American Idol judge says Instagram and Twitter are proof of the “decline of civilisation”.
She also encouraged fans to not care about social media and to instead live their lives.
Perry has over 68 million Instagram followers and 108 million Twitter followers, but says she would rather not document her whole life online.
“It’s hard because I’d rather not care about that and just live my life,” she told Refinery29. “We buy clothing and products or pose a certain way or go to an event to get a picture – it’s not good for us as a society. I think it’s actually the decline of civilisation if we’re going extreme about it.”
The 33-year-old says she is trying to find a balance in what she posts online, because she is as susceptible to the pressure as everyone else.
Perry is not the first star to talk about the pressure of having a social media account, especially ones with big followings. Celebrities who have spoken out about social media:
- Selena Gomez says when she found out she was the most followed person on Instagram, (she currently has 132 million followers) she “freaked out”. “It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to. I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see.” That’s the reason she regularly takes breaks from posting content, she told Vogue in 2017.
- Justin Bieber’s 96 million Instagram followers got too much for him in 2016 when he accused them of online bullying over his then-girlfriend Sofia Ritchie. “If you guys are really fans you wouldn’t be so mean to people that I like,” he wrote in a post on the platform. The problems didn’t stop, so Bieber quit the platform for six months.
- Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley said becoming famous made her delete her social media. The 25-year-old quit Instagram last year. In an interview, she said she did it because of how bad it is for mental health. Ridley said: “The more I read about teenage anxiety, the more I think it’s highly unhealthy for people’s mental health. She added: “It’s such a weird thing for young people to look at distorted images of things they should be.”
- Cinderella actress Lily James agreed with her comments, saying: “I’m not on Twitter, I don’t want to always have something to say, I want to save that for my life. “Also I think, especially as a young person, you change your opinions every second, so [you shouldn’t] put something down in concrete that’s going to come back and haunt you.”
- Ed Sheeran famously took a year-long break from social media in between his second and third albums as he said he was spending too much time on his phone. “I find myself seeing the world through a screen and not my eyes so I’m taking this opportunity of me not having to be anywhere or do anything to travel the world and see everything I missed,” he wrote in December 2015.
(Source: BBC News)
