In just a few years, Billie Eilish’s fame has risen to another level. Oscar and Grammy winner No Time To Die has been open about being a socialite and recently got honest about seeing a lot of hate directed at her while scrolling the internet. As it turns out, she’s the latest celebrity to step away from using social media.
Like many pop stars before her, Billie Eilish has been subject to a lot of public attention and opinion over the years. The singer has recently received a lot of backlash for having a boyfriend with a significant age difference between them and has previously addressed comments about her body and fashion choices. In a recent appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, Eilish shared that she just scrolled and said the following:
I don’t watch it anymore. I deleted everything from my phone. This is such a big deal to me. ‘Cause dude like you didn’t have the internet you grew up with. For me it felt like a big part – 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 when it wasn’t so internet – y that I had no childhood. I really had such a childhood.
During the chat with Conan O’Brien, Eilish shared with the former Late Night host that having grown up on the internet has made it harder to give up completely. As she recounted, she definitely had the kind of upbringing as a kid where she got outside a lot and wasn’t bombarded by the world of the internet. By the time she became a teenager, iPhones and the like became the norm and being on the internet is just what she’s used to, as it is for many other people her age.
It’s not like Billie Eilish completely deleted her social media accounts or anything like that. In fact, the singer posted a photo round on Instagram on Thursday. She updated her fans in a rather cryptic way with images of a beautiful sunset, blurry cityscapes, herself sitting under a tree, driving down the freeway, solving a jigsaw puzzle, basking in the sun in a bathing suit and riding a horse. Listen:
This post has almost six million likes! So massive is Billie Eilish’s platform that the commentary that accompanies her status in the world is just as massive. While it doesn’t seem like the singer is going cold turkey with social media, she said she looks at it less on her personal time. As she continued:
I was with my boyfriend the other day and we were sitting there and this video came up and it was like ‘Billie Eilish is a terrible 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 said all these things, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh’, ‘Wow’. It’s such a crazy reality I live in… It’s those final statements that they kind of know are right. God came down and said, ‘That’s the truth about Billie and you know it perfectly well and you don’t know her but you know it’s the truth and you have to tell everyone and everyone will believe it. ‘
Billie Eilish: The world is a little blurry
(Image credit: Apple TV+)
Written/Directed by RJ 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 the internet (like all of us) and coming across a video tearing down your character like Eilish seems to do on a regular basis? It’s no wonder she’s spending less time on social media, although I imagine she’ll still share her fashion looks or promote her continued role in climate change activism.
Billie Eilish previously spoke about her fears about online hate in the 2021 documentary about her, The World’s A Little Blurry, and years later it still affects her. However, it looks like Eilish is learning to distance herself from hurtful comments posted online, which would be overwhelming for anyone to witness about themselves on a regular basis.
