Aurora Starchild
Scarlett Johansson may be a Millennial, but she’s one of the rare kinds that stays clear of social media. And while at first that may just seem like being above all the swiping and scrolling, she just dropped a truth bomb and no, it isn’t that. The Avengers actress tried social media before and couldn’t do it — of her self-described “fragile ego.”
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Scarlett Johansson Says Social Media Gives Her Anxiety
Johansson was on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast when the topic of social media came up. She was chatting with Lauryn Evarts and Michael Bosstick about everything from motherhood to health routines and her skincare line The Outset. For the record, Johansson does have an Instagram page, but it’s for The Outset. She herself doesn’t have a page (but who needs one when you have a fan page with 4+ million followers?).
“Is that a choice that you made strategically? Are you just sick of it after you get off work? Like, what’s… what is that?” Evarts asked. It’s a great question that many Johansson fans have wondered. Is she just too cool for school?
“I honestly am too fragile a person to have social media. I can’t. My ego’s too fragile,” Johansson admitted.
Bosstick seemed perplexed and Evarts tried to tell her that she’d probably fare quite well online. But there’s more to it.
“I can’t deal with it. My brain is too fragile. I’m like a delicate flower,” Johansson continued. “I can only exist — I have enough anxiety.”
Evarts offered the option of just ignoring the comments, which Johansson agreed would give her even more anxiety.
Johansson Tried Instagram for 3 Days and Got Lost in the Vortex
“I had Instagram once for three days,” the Lost in Translation star admitted. “And when I started realizing that I’d spent 20 minutes looking at somebody’s Instagram page who I will never — who’s like, worked for a friend of mine. I’m like, now I know you have a Pitbull and two daughters, and you live in like, Burbank. I was like, I just wasted 17 minutes of time; I now feel like I should move to California, get this specific dog, and change my life in all these ways.”
It’s a sentiment that many of us have felt before. Who hasn’t surfed Instagram and started questioning themselves?
“I felt so bad, like I was missing out on this random person’s life,” Johansson shared. “I can’t do this, I’m too fragile, I have so much anxiety about other things, I can’t.”
She Admits to Using Instagram for Her Skincare Company, The Outset
However, Scarlett Johansson can’t really get away. She’s a business owner, and that business is on Instagram. It’s hard to thrive as a business these days without some sort of strategic social media game.
“I go onto The Outset to look at what we’re putting on there. I still think I’m not using it properly so I still can’t get updated information,” Johansson said. “When I go into the office, they show me what we’re doing. And we also make terrible videos. Kate and I make terrible videos, we’re both so bad at it. But it’s fun.”
The more Scarlett Johansson described her perception of social media, the more relatable she became. She’s not immune at all, not in the slightest. And she does look at the comments, but in the form of reviews for her company.
“I like to read customer reviews and perform them for people on TikTok. But I don’t have TikTok,” she added.
The actress admitted to feeling “like a 3-year-old with her mom’s phone” and getting “absorbed” into TikTok whenever she browses through the app.
“That’s how I know I can’t have it,” she said.
Scarlett Johansson Makes Great Instagram Videos Despite Her Aversion to Social Media
Despite Scarlett’s protests or detachment from her own personal social media page, she’s actually pretty entertaining in her Outset videos. The 38-year-old actress co-founded the plant-based skincare line as a personal project but also because she’s struggled with acne her entire life.
“I always had makeup on for events,” Johansson explained when asked why the public hasn’t been privy to her skin struggles. She’s generally always appeared to be flawless from head to toe.
“In my personal life I struggled with acne for such a long time,” she revealed. “To the point where my makeup artist was like, ‘You have acne now and then soon you’ll have wrinkles and acne.’”
“It’s tough because we do a job where you’re photographed and closely. And it was something that was constantly on my mind. And I was using very drying, aggressive treatments on my face constantly,” Johansson said. The treatments and nonstop makeup were making her skin worse.
“I was like, you know what, I’m going to stop everything. I’m just going to do a gentle exfoliation and just moisturize and give myself a break. And then my skin started healing itself,” she said.
