Just three months after returning to posting on Instagram, Selena Gomez is the most followed woman on the platform with 400 million followers. The “Only Murders in the Building” star passed the milestone on March 17. Previously, in February, she passed Kylie Jenner, who held the most followed women’s title with 382 million followers.
Although no other female celebrity has more followers than Gomez, she is not the most followed person on all of Instagram. This title goes to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, who has 562 subscribers. He is followed by another footballer, Lionel Messi, who has 442 million people following his account. As for Jenner, she now sits in fourth place overall. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is not far behind her with 369 subscribers.
Gomez has been candid in the past about her complicated relationship with Instagram. In a 2021 interview with Vogue, the “Calm Down” singer revealed that she deleted the photo-sharing platform’s app from her phone in 2019. Instead of posting things for herself, she would send her assistant about things to post for her.
She made the decision to walk away from the app after noticing it was affecting her mental health. “At one point, Instagram became my whole world, and it was really dangerous,” she told InStyle in 2022. “In my early twenties, I felt like I wasn’t enough. pretty. There was a whole period in my life where I thought I needed makeup and I never wanted to be seen without it. The older I got, the more I evolved and realized that I had to take control of this. I felt. I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and feel confident to be who I am.”
Fittingly, her latest post features two no-makeup selfies. She captioned the photos, “Violet chemistry,” a nod to the song of the same name on Miley Cyrus’ eighth studio album, “Endless Summer.”
“Taking a break from social media was the best decision I’ve ever made for my mental health,” Gomez explained. “The hate and pointless comparisons disappeared once I hung up my phone. I’ll have times when that weird feeling comes back, but now I have a much better relationship with myself.”
