Lorde, the 24-year-old pop star, has no posts on Instagram other than one promoting her upcoming album, Solar Power, and two others of a similar theme. Despite having 7.2 million followers on Twitter, she has no tweets up.
Born Ella Yelich-O’Connor, she discussed her decision to leave social media and considers herself an “elder statesman” at 24.
While discussing her latest track, Stoned At The Nail Salon, from her upcoming album in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, the pair also talked about Lorde’s minimal social media presence, and how she doesn’t use it in her personal life.
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“I realised I was trying to come up with a funny Instagram caption and do a photo of me that looked cool, that I would hope would get a certain amount of likes,” she told Lowe. “It sounds obvious, but that’s cooked.”
“For me, I’m not a girl that gets a bunch of likes. I am who I am, and I’ve got to lean into that. I think for the last one I was 21 and still like the kids, and then the culture started to change, and I didn’t know that I wanted to change with it. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a TikTok girl, an Instagram Stories girl, and it was a real crossroads.”
She continued: “I had to be like, ‘Do you want to keep being the kids? Or do you want to transition through that and be something of an elder statesman at 24?’ Which I really feel like I am now, which I love, but it took a minute. I felt a little like, ‘Oh no, I’m the kids?’”
Earlier on this month, speaking on Australian radio show ‘Ash London Live’, she said: “It’s been divine, I really enjoy it. I’m a shy sensitive person.”
She insists it’s been one of her best ever decisions, and she feels free now rather than overwhelming herself with information. “It didn’t give me much room to have ideas or brainstorm things.”
The one drawback that Lorde admits there is to coming off social media — keeping herself up-to-date on her friends’ lives. She said: “The only thing I do think is that I underestimated how much of my friends’ loves I kept up with on Instagram. People don’t really tell you what they’re up to, they just tell everyone via a story. That’s how people stay connected. I really have to make friend dates. I’ve been calendaring people’s birthdays now.”
“Part of what made me peace out on social media, apart from feeling like I was losing my free will, was the massive amounts of stress I was feeling about our planet, about systemic racism, and about police brutality in this country.”
The singer, who releases her third album Solar Power next month, returned this week with her new track, Stoned At The Nail Salon. The last music from her before this was her much-acclaimed album Melodrama in 2017.
