Tom Holland deleted Instagram after becoming ‘obsessed’ with what people thought about him

Tom Holland has spoken out about his decision to quit social media, saying that he became a bit too ‘addicted’ to scrolling through the apps, becoming ‘obsessed’ with it.

When you’re a person in Holland’s position and line of work, a lot of people have got a lot to say about you online.

That means that sometimes it can be a bit of a double-edged sword, which has prompted many celebrities to steer well wide of the whole thing.

However, Holland was on social media until he announced in 2022 that he was getting rid of it all, not because he was having – as he put it – a ‘mental breakdown’ but because he was just sick and tired of how it made him think.

In a recent interview for On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Holland explained how the whole thing started whilst he was under particular emotional pressure filming and producing The Crowded House.

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

He said: "I was having a really hard time with the job just because of how taxing it was, the emotional capacity that I was having to get to every day, and I decided to delete my Instagram because I just felt like I was so addicted to this kind of false version of my life that it was just taking over."

He added that the scrolling he was doing was ‘becoming a problem’ and he was ‘just obsessed with it [Instagram].”

“I was obsessed to find out what people were saying, and what they [people] thought about me,” he said.

“So, I decided to make an announcement, which unfortunately we have to do, and say that I am taking a break from social media.”

When you’re a celebrity that announces that you’re taking a break from Instagram, people tend to talk, and it tends to be fairly unedifying stuff.

It’s that which seems to have annoyed the 27-year-old Spider-Man actor.

He continued: “I tried to position myself and say like, 'I'm taking a break from social media because I feel like my mental health will benefit from it.'

“And the thing that really upset me is the press ran with that and they tried to make out that I was having this mental breakdown.

“And what upset me was if I was having a mental breakdown, that's not for you to report on.

“They took the story in the wrong direction and they painted – again – this negative light on mental health.”

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

“Rather than saying, ‘oh he’s doing it, so we should all feel OK to do it too’, they were saying ‘oh look, he’s not the perfect happy-go-lucky kid you think he is, he’s having a nervous breakdown in New York’.

“I think that was a really unfair line of journalism – let’s say – because I think that it again painted people looking for help in the wrong light.”