While the rest of the world is busy posting catchy quotes about rosé, sharing pics of their new look or Unicorn Frappuccinos, Jennifer Aniston says “No, Thank you” to social media. Oh no, its not like she has nothing cool or Instagram-worthy going on in her life. She is living a fabulous and healthy life, but sadly, you will never get a sneak-peak of it on Instagram. The former “Friends” star is one of the few celebrities who keeps social media at arm’s length (gasp!), and openly voices her reasons for abstinent.
“The one thing I have is maintaining this little circle of sanctity that’s my own,” says the movie queen. “If I’m sitting here posting something about my dogs or I’m Boomeranging my coffee mug in the morning, that’s just giving away one more piece of something that is mine.”
Anniston added how people can’t believe her stance, since they don’t seem to comprehend why someone wouldn’t want to “be on social media and show who they really are?” But she couldn’t disagree more. According to the star, her personal life is one place that’s truly hers, where she feels protected; where she can do whatever she wants without getting media exposure, getting dogged by paparazzi, or without a camera rolling. Why defile it?
It’s nothing new considering that the star has always kept us in the dark about her personal life, making sure not to comment on her love life. She hasn’t even hinted at when her divorce from Theroux is finalizing. Her discretion only makes her tabloid fodder and fuels preposterous speculation sometimes, but that seems to be fine with Aniston as she knows how to keep her cool.
In the debut episode of Arianna Huffington’s The Thrive Global Podcast, Aniston explains how it isn’t important for her to prove herself by making her life an open book on Instagram. For her, it’s all about self-preservation. With pages and pages written about her out there, with most of it just baseless speculation, the actress knows that caring for her own mental health should be her top priority.
While Aniston doesn’t feel left out of the social-media action while she sits around nonchalantly in her mansion, being an animal lover, she admits that the occasional pet vid can pique her curiosity. While she doesn’t feel like a hermit, she does find it hard to keep up when she feels that things are happening at a pace at which she is going to be left behind in the dark ages. Especially when she finds the tendrils of curiosity creeping up at her; “what cute video is that?”, “what’s so funny”, ‘What is that’? ‘What’s so interesting’?
While Aniston doesn’t have any social media presence, she doesn’t mind occasionally landing on Instagram after Googling something buzzworthy. Thanks to her ex-to-be-husband Justin Theroux’s account, Aniston does sometimes appear on Instagram when her curiosity gets the better of her.
While her sole purpose of avoiding social media is to preserve her personal life, Aniston has voiced concerns on several occasions about the damaging effects of social media on young people figuring out their identity. She worries how they are seeing themselves through someone else’s lens, which has been filtered, messed with, and changed, and then everything they do revolves around, “’like me, don’t like me, did I get liked?’ all this comparing and despairing can’t possibly do good to anyone.
In fact, apart from social media, the Dumplin’ star told Vogue earlier this year of her aversion to smart phones in general. “Honestly, when I look around and see people constantly on their phones, I feel like we’re missing so much. And it’s something we created”, the star sighed.
Aniston says if smartphones were a thing back in 1994, her breakthrough role may never have existed. She laughs about how if ‘Friends’ was created today; you would probably have a coffee shop full of people staring blankly into their iPhones. There would be no conversations or actual episodes. Who would have time for the Holiday Armadillo, long workplace gossips, or lobster theories.
She equates the cell phone dependency to the tobacco industry. As if it wasn’t hard enough being a kid growing up and discovering who you really now (we have all been there), but now with social media, they have added this extra pressure of gauging if people like or dislike everything they do. These man-made challenges are only weighing down our youth, and Anniston couldn’t agree more.
While you will be lucky to get updates on Aniston’s life on social media, you can watch her upcoming show, “Top of the Morning,” featuring Reese Witherspoon, which is soon to air. We can’t wait to see the duo again after that amazing episode of Friends. Go green.
