Selena Gomez, the one-time queen of Instagram, is already planning her next hiatus from the social media platform, and it coincides with the launch of her next album on January 10.
In other words, eager Selenators need to get on the ball and interacting quickly on the ‘Gram if they want a chance at getting her attention before she disappears again. Gomez has ditched the platform a few times throughout her career, including shortly after she took the crown as the most-followed person there.
Today, Gomez has slipped to fifth with 165 million followers. That’s a lot of pressure for anyone, and it’s a lot of expectations and scrutiny as well. But it’s also a very powerful tool, and one Gomez recognized she should use to get the word out about her first album in four years.
“I got back on because I was releasing music, but I just told my best friend Courtney [Lopez] yesterday, I’m going to have to take it off my phone again soon,” Gomez told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
“I took a break off Insta for a year, maybe a year and a half,” she said. “I’d rather stay away from anything that’s going to make me feel like shit.”
According to the “Lose You to Love Me” singer, the ‘Gram can also become problematic for her because she has an “addictive personality.” She told Vogue in 2017 — when she took that most-followed title — that she became a little obsessed with it.
“I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about,” Gomez admitted. “I always end up feeling like shit when I look at Instagram.”
At the time, she said she’d removed Instagram from her phone to keep herself from going there, and it looks like that is again the plan as it is again making her “feel like shit.”
In its place, Selena is looking forward to connecting with and spending time with her girlfriends who have no ties to the entertainment industry at all. As Hollywood Life notes, she says that they help connect her “to a life offstage.”
Much of her new album is about Gomez gaining a better understanding of and value for her mental health.
“I had low self-esteem, and that’s something I work on continuously,” she told WSJ. “But I feel so empowered because I’ve gained so much knowledge about what was going on mentally. My highs were really high, and my lows would take me out for weeks at a time.”
The album, entitled “Rare,” even got the stamp of approval from her close friend Taylor Swift, who knows a thing or two about processing your true self and feelings through music.
Gomez said one of the greatest things she learned in the years since her last album was that she does suffer from “mental health issues,” a revelation she called a “relief.” That realization and acceptance allowed her to be open to the idea of getting proper treatment and help.
“I realized that there was a way to get help and to find people that you trust,” she said. “I got on the right medication, and my life has been completely changed.”
And one of the best things you can do for your mental health, according to many professionals, is take a break from social media, which Gomez has been doing regularly over the past several years and is set to do again.
While there will be 165 million people who will miss her social media interactions, at least they’ll have “Rare” new music to tide them over until she inevitably returns again.
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