Selena Gomez Taking Another Social Media Break: ‘I’m Focusing on What Really Matters’

Selena Gomez is taking another social media break. According to People magazine, the Only Murders In the Building star posted an Instagram Story on Tuesday (Jan. 9) detailing her latest social rest in an attempt to focus on “what really matters.” The Story was accompanied by an image of of boyfriend producer Benny Blanco goofing around with two unidentified young children as Gomez announced, “I’m off social media for a while. I’m focusing on what really matters.”

Gomez announced a similar social time out in October due to what she dubbed the “hate, violence and terror” around the world, adding, that “people being tortured and killed or any act of hate towards any one group is horrific” and that “ALL people” need to be protected, “especially children.” That post came weeks after Hamas militants stormed into Israel and murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostages in the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, kicking off a three-month Israeli military response that has reportedly killed more than 22,000 Palestinians.

Gomez did not specify what prompted her latest social pause in Tuesday’s comment, though it came shortly after she took to the comments section on Insta to respond to rumors about the viral Golden Globes moment she shared with pal Taylor Swift at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards. The rampant, gossipy speculation about what the two women were discussing reached such a fevered pitch that Gomez felt it necessary to explain what she, Swift and Swift’s seatmate, Miles Teller’s Wife, Keleigh, were discussing.

“Was Selena Gomez Gossiping About Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet at Golden Globes?” asked an E! News headline on Instagram, to which Gomez responded: “Noooooo I told Taylor about two of my friends who hooked up. Not that that’s anyone business.”

Gomez previously announced a social pause in Feb. 2023 — telling followers on TikTok “I’m too old for this” — after telling InStyle in Jan. 2022 that, “Taking a break from social media was the best decision that I’ve ever made for my mental health.” At the time the singer/actress who currently has 429 million Instagram followers explained that she’d created a system “where I still don’t have my passwords. And the unnecessary hate and comparisons went away once I put my phone down. I’ll have moments where that weird feeling will come back, but now I have a much better relationship with myself.”

This article was first published by Billboard U.S.