Image via Gotham/FilmMagic
Until Selena Gomez returned to the Instagram and swiftly reclaimed the top spot, Kylie Jenner was Instagram’s most followed female user.
Gomez was once the most followed female on Instagram, but she took a break from the site before coming back even more popular. By Thursday, approximately 400 million people followed both ladies.
Gomez had most recently uploaded a photo of herself drinking, with the message, “I deleted this one time because I thought maybe it was too much but eh.”
The singer had told Vanity Fair that she had removed Instagram from her phone and had her staff post instead since she had found the social media platform to be poisonous.
“People can call me ugly or stupid and I’m like, Whatever. But these people get detailed,” she told the publication. “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.”
She continued: “The only thing I have on my phone is TikTok because I find it to be a little less hostile. There are wonderful things about social media—connecting with fans, seeing how happy and excited they are and their stories. But usually that’s filtered through [for me now]. I created a system. Everything I do I send to my assistant who posts them. As far as comments, my team will put together a few things that are encouraging.”
Later on Thursday, Gomez revealed in a TikTok Live video that she is taking yet another hiatus from social media.