Celebrities seem to have a love-hate relationship with social media. Some stars can't stop tweeting, employing the platform as a 24-7 stream of consciousness (we're looking at you, Yeezy), while others wouldn't be caught dead Instagramming their brunch. And, in light of this week's outrageous Twitter blowup around Kim Kardashian's nude selfie, it seems like the celebs who shun the world of social media may be on to something.
There are a surprising number of huge names with zero presence in the Twitterverse or other platforms. Just this week, Harper's Bazaar cover star Jennifer Aniston opened up about her aversion to social media. "We work so hard to maintain some sort of life and privacy, why would we intentionally put ourselves out there?" The woman's got a point. Privacy is one of the most commonly cited reasons that actors like Emma Stone and Bradley Cooper say no to social media. Others, like Emily Blunt, say it's too much upkeep. (Heard that!) George Clooney, for one, thinks it's asking for trouble — and based on the never-ending cycle of celebrity Twitter beefs, Clooney hit the nail on the head.
Here are 18 celebrities on why they choose to stay off of social media altogether.
Daisy Ridley
"It’s not good for me, personally. I’m just not equipped for it. I’m super sensitive—not too sensitive—but I really feel things. Also there is also a sense that I’m asked who I’m dating a lot more than John [Boyega] is. I don’t answer, because I have things in my life that are private. There is certainly a personal thing of, 'Will people think I’m ungrateful?' Someone literally said to me, 'So-and-so didn’t answer questions about that, and they came across really cold.' But I have to come first, because if I am not healthy—I was struggling with anxiety last year—if I’m not mentally healthy, or I’m depleted from sharing so much, I won’t have anything left for when people approach me."
— Glamour, 2017
Jennifer Aniston
“We work so hard to maintain some sort of life and privacy, why would we intentionally put ourselves out there? It’s like you’re on TV or on a movie screen. [Fans] see you, hold their phone right up to your face, and take a picture [to post on Instagram]. I’m like, I’m standing right here with a pulse! It’s sweet, though, just… different.”
— Harper's Bazaar, 2016
Emily Blunt
"I’m like a dinosaur with that stuff, No. 1. But it’s also not really an organic sort of fit for me. I can barely remember to text people back! I also feel that my job is to persuade people that I’m somebody else, so if I reveal too much, then I’m doing my job a disservice, in a way."
— Vulture, 2015
Emma Stone
“It's that need to be liked, that need to be seen, that need to be validated, in a way, through no one that you know. And so people ask the question about fame, or what it feels like, and it seems like everybody knows what that feels like. It seems like everyone's cultivating their lives on Instagram or on different forms of social media, and what pictures look best of their day... It's this very modern ‘keeping up with the Joneses.'"
— Epix, 2014
Bradley Cooper
"For me, maybe I'm old-fashioned, if I know so much about you and you're playing a character in a movie, then that's a lot of work I'm gonna have to do to forget who you are so that I can believe the character and therefore enjoy the movie."
— Britain's OK! TV via AceShowbiz, 2011
Jennifer Lawrence
"I will never get Twitter... I'm not very good on phones or technology. I cannot really keep up with emails, so the idea of Twitter is so unthinkable to me... I don't really understand what it is. It's like this weird enigma that people talk about... If you ever see a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter that says it's me, it most certainly is not."
— The Radio1 Breakfast Show With Nick Grimshaw, 2014
Kate Winslet
"It has a huge impact on young women's self-esteem, because all they ever do is design themselves for people to like them. And what comes along with that? Eating disorders. And that makes my blood boil. And is the reason we don't have any social media in our house."
— The Sunday Times, 2015
George Clooney
"If you're famous, I don't — for the life of me — I don't understand why any famous person would ever be on Twitter. Why on God's green earth would you be on Twitter? Because first of all, the worst thing you can do is make yourself more available, right? Because you're going to be available to everybody. But also Twitter. So one drunken night, you come home and you've had two too many drinks and you're watching TV and somebody pisses you off, and you go 'Ehhhhh' and fight back."
— Esquire, 2013
Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen
Ashley: "[The thought of having millions of Twitter followers] gives me so much anxiety."
Mary-Kate: "We’ve spent our whole lives trying to not let people have that accessibility, so it would go against everything we’ve done in our lives to not be in the public."
— Vogue, 2011
Elizabeth Olsen
"I don't [use] social media, and I feel like that's how people control their image. My image, in my mind, is just to disappear. I just want people to see the work that I'm proud of... I feel like you let people touch you when you have Instagram or Twitter, and I don't want to be touched all the time. I'm not going to do it — ever."
— Fashion, 2015
Keira Knightley
"I hate the internet. I find it dehumanising to constantly check emails or social sites which have become so fashionable."
— The Telegraph, 2009
"It made me feel a little bit like being in a school playground and not being popular and standing on the sidelines kind of going, 'Argh.'"
— On trying out Twitter for 12 hours once, Harper's Bazaar, 2013
Julia Roberts
"It's kind of like cotton candy: It looks so appealing and you just can't resist getting in there, and then you just end up with sticky fingers and it lasted an instant... There's an anonymity [online] that makes people feel safe to participate in hatefulness. I like a good old-fashioned fistfight if people are pissed off at each other.
— Marie Claire, 2013
Amy Poehler
"I'm not a real social media person. I'm not on Twitter... I try not to read too much online because I always get my feelings hurt, even if someone's flattering you. Like somebody tweeting, 'Call me crazy, but I think Amy Poehler's attractive.' And you're like, 'Okay? Thank you?' Or like someone writing, 'I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I'd have sex with Amy Poehler.'"
"The amount of Instagram selfies seems crazy out-of-control... The idea of, 'This is my face and everyone needs to see it all the time,' is so far from the privacy that people used to seek. Now everyone acts the way '80s performance artists used to act. Everybody's Karen Finley. Everybody's like, 'This is my vagina! I'm gonna put shit all over me and take pictures!'"
— Paper, 2013
Tina Fey
"Most people are so fucking boring that they should [shut] up, and you should have to get a license. And I'm volunteering to be in charge of the licenses... Go write it in a journal and mail it to your grandma. Do you understand how boring this would be, if I were Tweeting this?"
— In a now-deleted Twitter Q&A video via Jezebel, 2013
Benedict Cumberbatch
“No matter who pretends to be me at the moment, I do not tweet, I don’t Twitter, I don’t... Just listen to how much I talk...and tweeting is about being pithy. I think tweeting would take so many hours of editing I’d be lost for doing my job."
— At the Cheltenham Literature Festival via RadioTimes, 2012
Kristen Stewart
"Twitter fucks me over every day of my life. Because people go, 'I'm sitting next to Kristen Stewart right now,' and then they show up. I see people on their phones and I just want to take these cookies and throw them. It's like, 'Get off your fucking phone and get a life!' I get so mad. It's like you're trampling on someone's life without any regard. And it's rampant. Everyone can do it now. Buy a camera and you're paparazzi; get a Twitter account and you're an informant. It's so annoying."
— Flaunt, 2010
Sandra Bullock
"We're not representing our lives truthfully... Like when you're yelling at your child, you're not taking a selfie of you being a horrible parent. No, you're waiting for the perfect selfie. 'Do I look thinner now?' 'Do I look great?' It's this false projection of one's life. Hollywood has now gone global. Everyone's Hollywood now... People have these worlds they post and it's about projecting an image and getting likes."
— The Times via People, 2016
Scarlett Johansson
"Personally, I don’t feel the need to brand myself in that way... I don’t have a Facebook or a Twitter account, and I don’t know how I feel about this idea of, 'Now, I’m eating dinner, and I want everyone to know that I’m having dinner at this time' or 'I just mailed a letter and dropped off my kids.' That, to me, is a very strange phenomenon. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than have to continuously share details of my everyday life. I’m always surprised that certain actors have Twitter accounts."
— Interview, 2011
Emma Thompson
"Listen, I’d rather have root canal treatment FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE than join Twitter. That’s not my scene at all. I can’t bear the thought of being connected all the time. God knows what it’s all doing to us. I hope that everyone does realise that we are all just one giant human experiment at the moment. We are just a great big bunch of little gerbils on wheels... We invent stuff, we just fling it out there, we let anyone use it. A 3-year-old could fucking be on Twitter."
— Vanity Fair via Business Insider, 2014
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