Photo Credit: Hailey Bieber/Instagram
Hailey Bieber is going on almost 3 years of marriage to Justin Bieber and the two have gone through a lot in that time period. From him going to church doing praise and worship trying to change his life to his hobo beard phase, the two are certainly growing together. Now Hailey’s been having trouble logging on to social media, to the point that she stopped doing it during the week and only utilizes it on weekends. And even then, she won’t use Twitter.
Now I can relate to the frustration that social media can bring as far as the nonsense that’s on there. Articles about trauma from seeing constant racist imagery on social media, especially after major racial events have also been published recently as a testament to some of the troubling nature around social media and I myself have stopped visiting the Facebook accounts of people in about a 10 mile radius of where I live now that I’m in the South because these topics are almost 100% worse here.
But enough about me. Hailey had a chat with Dr. Jessica Clemons in a video uploaded to her Instagram account where she spoke about some of what she encountered online. “After getting married especially, it really opened me up to this new kind of level of attention. I think one of the biggest things I struggled with for sure was the comparison aspect, of body comparison, looks comparison, behavior comparison.”
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Now some might think this is childish and most have had some ex to contend with, being in the same city, hearing about them all the time but most don’t get messages about them around the clock on the internet either. And she’s 24 years old. It takes serious coping skills to deal with that at an already self-conscious prone time in her life. And she’s married to one of the most recognized names in pop culture so it likely just preys on insecurities of whether she can live up to the name despite her being from the much more famous family.
“I think when you’re going through a situation where you just have so many people hounding you with the same thing over and over and over again, it starts to mess with your mind, and then you start to question everything,” she continued.
“You’re like, ‘Is there something that I’m not seeing that they see? Maybe they’re right.’ It got to such a low point for me that I was like, ‘Honestly, maybe I’m delusional.’ It’s like separating two realities, essentially.”
She deleted Twitter she says because it’s a “very toxic environment.” She said, “One of the things that I found really helpful to me was I started doing something where I don’t go on Instagram Monday through Friday.”
“I don’t even have a Twitter anymore, because there was never really a time I’d go on there that I didn’t feel like it was a very toxic environment,” she added. “The thought of even opening the app gives me such bad anxiety that I feel like I’m gonna throw up.”
Now it’s important to note that she didn’t say explicitly who she was being compared to but did state a timeline of “the last two and a half years” and well, that’s who she has been compared to in the media and social media does directly reflect what’s in the media often times.
One instance of abuse she had to endure was how at the end of 2020 when a fan called for people to bombard her Instagram with messages of “Selena is better.” In the end, think what you will about her having this conversation, but the affect that social media has on our lives should probably be discussed more than it is.
