Rap icon Jay-Z recently shared his disdain for social media on a podcast appearance with Kevin Hart. 

In a comprehensive interview on the comedian’s Peacock Original Hart to Heart talk show, Jay discussed his history with social media, the strong, negative feelings he experienced on his immediate entry, and how he chose to dip out, no questions asked. 

“It’s not for me. It’s not for me to engage. I didn’t grow up in that space,” he told the comedian. Jay went on to share how he attempted to join Instagram twice — once in November 2021 after his friend and colleague Lenny Santiago tried to get him on board. 

Santiago — who serves as a senior vice president on Jay’s Roc Nation entertainment agency — managed to get his longtime buddy to sign up as ‘@jayz’. “I let Lenny gas me. We was drinking at J. Cole’s concert,” he said. 

Initially, Jay promoted the movie and soundtrack he produced, called The Harder They Fall. He deleted the page in around 24 hours, after getting overwhelmed by the immediate onslaught of over 800,000 followers. 

“It went crazy and it was on TIME magazine the next morning. I was like, this is too much,” he recalled. 

Despite the common association between social media and celebrity status, there’s plenty of celebs who prefer to keep themselves detached from the constant craze of online fame. Here’s some of the biggest ones out there, from Bollywood, Hollywood, and beyond: 

1. Saif Ali Khan 

As one of Bollywood’s biggest stars, Saif Ali Khan certainly has more than enough demand when it comes to maintaining a social media presence. While he stays off Instagram, Twitter, and the likes, he does occasionally make an appearance on wife, Kareena Kapoor Khan’s. 

2. Scarlett Johansson 

As one of the world’s highest-paid actresses — raking in $75 million from her Marvel appearance alone — Johansson definitely commands some pretty great presence, on and off the screen. Despite this, she finds the idea of keeping a Facebook or Twitter presence abhorrent. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than have to continuously share details of my everyday life,” she admitted to Interview Magazine back in 2011, and she hasn’t changed her mind since. 

3. Selena Gomez 

While Gomez does have an official staff-managed Instagram account, she ultimately said goodbye to personal interactions with the platform in 2018, going so far as to state that the decision “saved her life” in a 2021 WWD interview. She explained how social media’s pressure to always be ‘on’, the constant influx of information, and the often-negative focus on her personal life made her take the call, one that has left her ‘really happy’ as a result. 

4. Ranbir Kapoor 

Unlike his late father, Rishi Kapoor and wife Alia Bhatt, actor Ranbir Kapoor prefers to stay away from having to deal with social media, calling himself a ‘very shy introvert’.  Instead of having a public profile, he reportedly keeps a secret Instagram account to stay in touch with family and friends. 

5. Robert Pattinson 

Pattinson’s dislike of publicity is well-documented — apart from detailing the several measures he takes to avoid the paparazzi, he also has written, directed, and starred in a tongue-in-cheek short film expressing his frustration with extreme fame. “Well, I’m old and boring. And I only have abs, like, two weeks a year,” he quipped to the New York Times when quizzed about his Instagram absence. That said, like Kapoor, Pattinson too has a secret account. Good luck trying to find it, though! 

6. Rani Mukherjee 

While other female stars from the ’90s, like Madhuri Dixit Nene, Raveena Tandon, Shilpa Shetty, and Sushmita Sen, have been pretty active on social media, one of the most popular of them all has decided to stay away from it, with her agents sometimes addressing rumours originating from the dozens of fake accounts bearing her name. A fan once even asked fellow actor Kajol about Mukherjee’s social media absence and received little more than a casual joke in reply. 

(Featured Image Credits: Peacock)