Less than a month after overtaking Kylie Jenner’s spot as the most followed woman on Instagram, Selena Gomez just reached another social media milestone.
On March 18, the 30-year-old pop star became the first woman to reach 400 million followers on the photo-sharing app. Gomez celebrated the achievement with a roundup of photos posing with fans, captioning the carousel, “wishing I could hug all 400 million of you.”
Just one day later, she’s already sitting pretty at 401 million followers. Meanwhile, Jenner remains close behind with 382 million and soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is holding onto his top spot with 563 million followers.
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While Selena Gomez is clearly grateful to her supportive fans, she has been outspoken about the toll social media and cruel body-shaming comments have had on her mental health. “My weight would constantly fluctuate because I would be on certain medications. And obviously, people just ran with it,” Gomez said during her recent appearance on the Apple TV+ docuseries, Dear… “It was like they couldn’t wait to find a thing to bring me down. I was being shamed for gaining weight because of my lupus.”
She continued, “I lied. I would go online and I would post a picture of myself and I would say, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not accepting what you’re saying.’ All the while being in the room posting and crying my eyes out because nobody deserves to hear those things.”
“Though I was posting these things saying it doesn’t bother me, because I didn’t want it to bother other people who are experiencing the same thing, getting shamed for what they look like, who they are, who they love… I just think it’s so unfair,” she said. “I don’t think that anybody deserves to feel less than.”
In mid-February, the Only Murders in the Building star discussed her social media presence with Vanity Fair, confirming that her Instagram is still managed by her assistant and TikTok is the only app she had on her phone (though she later announced she was stepping back from the app after all that Hailey Bieber drama). “I went through a hard time in a breakup and I didn’t want to see any of the [feedback]—not necessarily about the relationship, but the opinions of me versus [someone] else,” she told VF. “There’d be thousands of really nice comments, but my mind goes straight to the mean one.”
Gomez continued, “People can call me ugly or stupid and I’m like, Whatever. But these people get detailed. They write paragraphs that are so specific and mean. I would constantly be crying. I constantly had anxiety…I couldn’t do it anymore. It was a waste of my time.”
Still, Gomez told Vanity Fair that she loves connecting with fans online and hearing their stories. All 401 million of them!
