Selena Gomez says taking a four-year internet break ‘changed her life’

‘I am happier, I am more present, I connect more with people’

Selena Gomez has not used Instagram in four years (Getty Images for #SeeHer)

Actor and singer Selena Gomez has surprised her Instagram followers by revealing she hasn’t used the social media platform in four and a half years.

Speaking on Good Morning America, the superstar referenced her decision to spend less time in the app - and the entire internet itself - and the mental health benefits of doing so.

She said: “It has changed my life completely. I am happier, I am more present, I connect more with people. I understand how powerful the internet is, and in so many ways it’s done the best things for the world.

“But for me, I get to my news that is actually important...through people in my life.”

Since 2017 Gomez has curated her social media posts, but hires a team of people to run her accounts.

She previously revealed that she prioritised her mental health by giving the logins to her social media accounts to her assistant and deleting the apps from her phone.

Gomez made the decision after struggling with negativity on social media apps such as Instagram, where she currently has more than 310 million followers.

The 29-year-old told GMA that “growing up in the spotlight” taught her a lot, and that she “took the necessary steps” to remove herself from it.

Now she is launching a mental fitness company called Wondermind, in collaboration with her own mother Mandy Teefey, and businesswoman Daniella Pierson.

She explained to GMA how it offers free online resources, content, tools and exercises - all “vetted by an expert committee of the world’s best psychiatrists, therapists and social workers.”

According to Pierson, the platform seeks to “normalise talking about these mental illnesses that maybe people thought they knew about, but they actually manifest in different ways in different people.”

Speaking to Instyle earlier this year, Gomez said Instagram influenced her beauty expectations, and how she appeared in public.

She admitted that the app even became her “whole world”.

Gomez added: “The older I got, the more I evolved and realized that I needed to take control of what I was feeling. I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and feel confident to be who I am,” she said.

“Taking a break from social media was the best decision that I’ve ever made for my mental health.”

It’s not the first time Gomez has been transparent about her negative relationship with social media, as she previously revealed that as soon as she “became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out”.

She told Vogue in 2017: “It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to. 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. I always end up feeling like sh*t when I look at Instagram.”