Billie Eilish Explains Why She Deleted All Her Social Media Apps From Her Phone
Billie Eilish is "Happier Than Ever" by steering clear of social media. The Grammy winner, 21, revealed that she has taken the plunge and deleted all social media apps on her phone. Eilish opened up to Conan O'Brien on his Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast this week about her approach to social media, and the measures she's taken to avoid it. The singer detailed what it was like growing up with the internet in her formative years, and why she chooses now to keep her distance.
“I don’t look at it anymore. I’ve deleted it all off my phone which is such a huge deal for me,” she told O’Brien. “You didn’t have the internet to grow up with…I feel like I grew up in the perfect time of the internet that wasn’t so internet-y that I didn’t have a childhood. I really had such a childhood and I was doing stuff all the time. It was computer and games on computers, but barely. We were doing stuff. And then when I became a preteen, it was iPhones, and then I got a little older and there was all of what [it] has become." The 7-time Grammy winner added, “But being a preteen and a teenager on the internet, those were my people, I was one of them.”
Eilish also explained in the interview, alongside her brother Finneas, what "freaks" her out about the internet "is how gullible it makes you." “Anything I read on the internet, I believe. Me! And I know for a fact that’s stupid and that I shouldn’t do that because I have proof that it’s not all true. Almost none of it is true,” she said. “It’s small white lies that [go] over everyone’s heads, but everyone believes. How much was a lie what I was reading when I was looking at the internet?”
The No Time To Die hitmaker, who previously shut down criticism of her body online, said another reason for deleting her social media apps was because she didn’t like looking at pictures of herself or reading comments written about her. She relates how she has always been a person who used the internet but is now struggling with so many of the stories being about her, despite nothing changing about her or about her life, as far as she is concerned. "Slowly the videos that I’m watching and the things that I see on the internet are about me. ‘Eww, stinky.’ I don’t like that,” she admitted.
She explained how recently she came across a video that claimed to explain why Billie Eilish was a horrible person. "[The video] was like, 'Billie Eilish is a horrible person.' And then it was a very serious video of why," she explained. "The person seemed in the right head space and they were saying all of these things. I was like, 'Jeez, wow.' It's just such a crazy reality that I live in. I'm like, 'That's my face. That's my name. That's me. Oh, interesting. OK. Alright.'"
While Eilish is staying off social media she did post a carousel post of herself engaging in relaxing activities such as horseback riding, sunbathing, taking a drive, completing a puzzle and other relaxing endeavors, on Thursday, March 4.
