Billie Eilish fans confused after she adds all followers to close friends list on Instagram

Billie Eilish has updated the status of 111 million Instagram followers, making them all her “close friends.”

The 22-year-old singer left fans confused after her official account added them all to her “close friends” group on 4 April.

On Instagram, the “close friends” list means only select people can view stories.

Following the update to her account, the first thing she posted on her “close friends” story was a picture of her hand held up to the night sky.

The post was made without a caption or song attached - just a green box with a white star in the top right-hand corner of the screen, indicating the post was to her “close friends” story.

Fans expressed their excitement, and confusion, on social media platforms.

“My dumb*** thought Billie Eilish accidentally added me to her close friends,” one person wrote on X/Twitter.

Another asked “Why am I in Billie Eilish’s close friends?”

Next to a clip of Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw fawning over the Eiffel Tower, a third X user wrote: “Opening Instagram and pretending that Billie Eilish personally put me on her close friends list.”

“How I woke up being on Billie Eilish close friends,” posted one ecstatic fan, alongside a video of a person crying.

Another Instagram user wrote: “Thanks for puttin me on cf seeing these comments, I noticed I’m not the only one. But it’s a great way to make us feel special.”

Since the update to her “private” page, Eilish gained over seven million new followers on Instagram. The Grammy winner now has 118 million followers.

Eilish’s social media switch-up comes amid reports that the first half of her third album will soon be released.

On 11 February, the artist announced that her new album had finally been mastered but did not confirm a release date.

The star won the Oscar for Best Original Song this year for her record in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie. In collaboration with her brother Finneas, she wrote and recorded the poignant ballad, “What Was I Made For?”

Eilish has previously admitted to deleting all her social media accounts off her phone.

During a 2023 appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Eilish said that she no longer looked at social media.

“I deleted it all off my phone, which is such a huge deal for me. Cause, dude, you didn’t have the internet to grow up with,” she said. “For me, it was such a big part of–not my childhood, I wasn’t like an iPad baby, thank god–but honestly, I feel like I grew up in the perfect time of the internet that it wasn’t so internet-y that I didn’t have a childhood.”

Eilish continued: “Suddenly I’m doing what I’ve always done and looking at the internet because I am an internet person...and slowly the videos that I’m watching and the things that I see on the internet are about me. Ew, stinky, I don’t like that.”

The singer has mentioned in the past the negative impact that fame has had on her. She told The LA Times that mean comments upset her.

“Which then worries me because I’m like, ‘Oh, God, are the mean things [about me] actually true? And what are they?’ I want to know them! But I don’t want to know them, because what is that going to do for me? Nothing,” she said.