Hailey Bieber Opened Up About the ‘Cruelty’ She Faces on Social Media
Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin) may be one of the most famous faces on Instagram, but that doesn't mean things are always rosy for her on the platform.
On Friday the model took to Instagram to get candid about how negative comments, messages, and bullying on social media affect her.
“I would say my most favorite part of existing is human connection," Bieber wrote in the caption of her Instagram post of a stunning blue sea. "I absolutely love connecting with other people, I love finding common interests between me and others, hearing people’s story, I love laughing with others, and I love crying with others. I feel so very very deeply. My heart explodes with happiness when my friends and family are happy and my heart feels crushed when they are hurting and sad."
She went on to explain to her 24 million followers that the reason she was sharing the lengthy message was "because I love to connect, I do my best to expose my heart which means I love freely and I empathize deeply, and because of that I also hurt very easily when I feel like people don’t see my heart and see me for who I am."
The 23-year-old went on to say apps like Instagram and Twitter are "a breeding ground for cruelty towards each other, and because people don’t take the time to connect with each other on an honest level before they resort to hatred, it starts to damage what could be really beautiful human interaction and connection."
Bieber added that she could sit there "all day" and pretend the messages don't bother her, but, she noted, "NEWS FLASH: it hurts to be torn apart on the internet!!! It hurts to be compared to other human beings every single day, it hurts for people to jump to conclusions and make assumptions. It hurts to be called names, and to feel like you don’t measure up to a certain standard... the list goes on and on."
To close her message, Bieber wrote, "I share this only because it weighs often on my heart and because it’s important to be honest about how these things affect us mentally and emotionally. Hopefully, it speaks to someone struggling with the same. With that being said Happy New Year. Let’s connect more in 2020." As of Saturday (January 4) the post had more than half a million likes and thousands of comments, so here's hoping her message of kindness and acceptance resonates on social for the rest of 2020.
This isn't the first time Bieber has spoken out about the perils of social media. When speaking with Glamour in 2019, Bieber said, "I just wish we all embraced the truth behind social media more."
"It's like a movie, it's not real—it's a set with lighting, and cameras, and production," she added. "It's created. I hope nobody looks at a photo of a model where they have like all this hair and makeup, and think that that's what they're supposed to look like all the time. People need to understand the contrast."
Earlier this year Bieber was also hit with a barrage of negativity from Selena Gomez fans after the model wed Gomez's ex Justin Bieber. Gomez herself had to take to social media to ask her followers to treat Bieber with kindness.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
