Selena Gomez found the perfect cure to social media separation: remove it!
“I don’t have it on my phone, so there’s no temptation,” Gomez tells ELLE for the publication’s Sept. 2021 issue, its first-ever Latinx print. “I suddenly had to learn how to be with myself. That was annoying, because, in the past, I could spend hours looking at other people’s lives.”
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“I would find myself down nearly two years in someone’s feed, and then I’d realize, ‘I don’t even know this person!’ Now I get information the proper way. When my friends have something to talk about, they call me and say, ‘Oh, I did this.’ They don’t say, ‘Wait, did you see my post?’”
The multi-faceted entertainer also opens up about her past physical and mental health challenges.
“My lupus, my kidney transplant, chemotherapy, having a mental illness, going through very public heartbreaks — these were all things that honestly should have taken me down,” Gomez says.
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“Every time I went through something, I was like, ‘What else? What else am I going to have to deal with? You’re going to help people.’ That’s really what kept me going. There could have been a time when I wasn’t strong enough and would have done something to hurt myself.”
Fortunately, Gomez has a wonderful outlet.
“I don’t think I’ll ever quit making music,” she says. “I’m not saying I want a Grammy. I just feel like I’m doing the best I can, and it’s all about me. Sometimes, that can really get to me.” Music, unlike acting, is so personal: “You’re pouring yourself out.”
