In 2023, social media has become a common aspect of so many of our lives. It’s a way for us to remain connected with our loved ones, favorite celebrities and the happenings of the world. However, it can be easy to forget that social media is not mandatory. One can leave it at any time, which is exactly what Scarlett Johansson apparently did just a few days after downloading Instagram.
The famed actress recently got real about why she doesn’t have a presence on social media, and it’s so relatable. I’m suddenly contemplating deleting it all myself. Here’s what she said about the topic while on The Skinny Confidential podcast:
I honestly am too fragile a person to have social media. I can’t, my ego is too fragile. My brain is too fragile, I’m like a delicate flower. I have enough anxiety… I had Instagram once for three days. When I started realizing that I’d spent 20 minutes looking at somebody’s Instagram page who’s worked for a friend of mine, who had a family. Now I know you have a pitbull and two daughters and you live in like Burbank. I was like, I just wasted 17 minutes of time. I now feel like I should move to California, get this specific dog, and change my life in all these ways. I felt so bad, like I was missing out on this random person’s life. I can’t do this. I’m too fragile.
Johansson’s comments really speak to the pitfalls of social media that I believe all of us have experienced in some fashion. It provides a window into other people’s curated lives, and it can cause some major FOMO at the drop of a hat. However, in the case of the Asteroid City actress, she has more self-control than most of us, and she decided to keep it out of her life and therefore, not waste her time on it.
Now, Scarlett Johansson didn’t quite grow up on the internet like I did as an ‘80s baby herself. Perhaps that has helped aid her in simply pulling back from all the social media platforms completely. Either way, she makes some really good points about how a quick look on one of these apps can derail one’s time in ways that are not helpful. That being said, the actress continued with these words:
I mean it’s definitely fun. Everytime I see [TikTok] in our office, I then become like a 3-year-old with their mom’s phone where I get completely absorbed into it. That’s why I know I can’t have it.
Johansson spoke more about her relationship with social media on the podcast, which you can watch in full below:
Scarlett Johansson recently got into the skincare industry with her clean skincare line The Outset. As she shared, she does help her team with TikToks and enjoys reading customer reviews as the company’s founder. However, that’s all she uses it for.
While Johansson doesn’t use social media herself, she and the cast of Asteroid City took part in the Wes Anderson TikTok trend recently. She also admitted in an interview that she’d love to work with Tom Cruise. This, probably through a journalist seeing it on socials, allowed him to learn of it and share his mutual interest in the collaboration. Then there’s the fact that her thoughts about these platforms got to me through social media and had me contemplating my own relationship with those apps. In other words, these mediums can be good and bad, but either way, it is a connective platform, even if one doesn’t use it much.
Following Johansson’s latest movie Asteroid City, you can get excited about her role in Transformers One, which is on the 2024 movie schedule for September 13.
