In just a few years, Billie Eilish’s fame has skyrocketed into another level. The Oscar and Grammy-winning No Time To Die singer has been open about navigating being a public figure, recently getting honest about seeing a lot of hate about her when scrolling on the internet. As it turns out, she’s the latest celebrity to move away from using social media.
Like many pop stars before her, Billie Eilish has been prone to a lot of public attention and opinions over the years. The singer has recently received a lot of backlash for having a boyfriend with a sizable age-gap between them and previously dealing with comments about her body and fashion choices. In a recent appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, Eilish shared that she has simply scrolling, saying this:
I don’t look at it anymore. I’ve deleted it all off my phone. Which is such a huge deal for me. Cuz dude, like you didn’t have the Internet to grow up with. For me, it was like a big part of –and not my childhood, I wasn’t like an iPad baby thank god – but honestly I feel like I grew up in the perfect time of the Internet where it wasn’t so Internet-y that I didn’t have a childhood. I really had such a childhood.
During the conversation with Conan O’Brien, Eilish shared with the former late night host that since she grew up on the internet, it’s more difficult to completely give it up. As she shared, when she was a kid, she most definitely had the kind of upbringing where she often went outside and wasn’t bombarded by the world of the internet. As she became a preteen, iPhones and such started becoming the norm, and being on the internet is just what she’s used to, like it is for many other people her age.
It’s not like Billie Eilish has completely deleted her social media accounts or anything like that. In fact, the singer posted a round of photos on Instagram on Thursday. She updated her fans in a rather cryptic way with pictures of a beautiful sunset, blurry city views, herself sitting under a tree, driving down the highway, completing a puzzle, soaking up the sun in a bathing suit and riding a horse. Check it out:
That post has nearly six million likes! Billie Eilish’s platform is so massive that the commentary that comes with her status in the world is just as massive. While it doesn't look like the singer is going cold turkey with social media, she said she's looking at it less during in her personal time. As she continued:
I was with my boyfriend the other day, and we’re sitting there and this video came up and it was like ‘Billie Eilish is a horrible person.’ And it was like this very serious video about why and the person seemed very, you know, like in the right headspace. And, they were saying all these things, and I’m like ‘geez,’ ‘wow.’ It’s such a crazy reality I live in... It’s these definitive statements that they know are right, somehow. God came down and said ‘This is the truth about Billie, and you know it for a fact, and you don’t know her, but you know it’s the truth, and you have to tell everybody about it and everyone’s gonna believe it.’
Written/Directed By: R.J. Cutler
Featuring: Billie Eilish, Finneas O'Connell, Maggie Baird, Patrick O'Connell, Justin Bieber, Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande and Claudia Sulewski
How To Stream: AppleTV+ subscription
Can you imagine just mindlessly scrolling through the internet (like we all do) and coming upon a video tearing down your character like Eilish seemingly regularly does? It’s no wonder she’s spending less time on social media, though I’d imagine she’ll still share her fashion looks or promote her continued role in climate change activism.
Billie Eilish previously spoke to her fears regarding internet hate in the 2021 documentary about her, The World’s A Little Blurry, and years later it continues to affect her. However, it looks like Eilish is learning to distance herself from hurtful comments on the internet that would be overwhelming for anyone to regularly witness about themselves.
