CULTURE

Michelle Williams Reveals Why She Isn’t on Social Media

She has an explanation for why she's not on it.


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With each passing day, the number of celebrity holdouts on social media seemingly shrinks. One person who will most likely not be joining any time soon, though, is Michelle Williams.

Like many people who experience anxiety through social media, Williams is unsure how to use it in an actually positive way. In her words: “I haven’t figured out how to use [social media] as a source for my own good,” she tells Elle UK. “I haven’t figured out how to use it to find something inspiring or beautiful…I’m just not a tech-y person. It’s a little ridiculous to be so unknowledgeable about the thing that has sort of taken over the world. I guess I don’t relate to it, which probably makes me irrelevant.”

Even though Williams isn’t on social media, she’s most definitely not irrelevant. Over the past couple of years alone, Williams starred in one of the decade’s most successful films The Greatest Showman, which was the fourth most successful musical of all-time as of last year, got nominated for an Oscar, and, perhaps most importantly, helped spark a wider discussion about the gender pay gap after she received less than one percent of her All the Money in the World costar Mark Wahlberg’s salary for reshoots following Kevin Spacey’s exit from the film. (Wahlberg later donated the $1.5 million he made from reshoots to Time’s Up, an organization which works to minimize the pay gap — which, ironically, was likely fueled by social media backlash.)

Outside of not seeing how social media promotes “good,” at least for her, Williams has talked before about why she avoids it. Back in 2015, she talked about how a single mother is so exhausting she doesn’t have time for social media. “So that leaves me feeling pretty exhausted. I’m the person who falls asleep all the time,” she told Elle UK. “You invite me over for dinner or to a party, and there’s a whole scrapbook of pictures of me napping. I’ve even been given a nickname because of my snoring.”

Instead of spending her free time scrolling through Instagram, Williams picks up a book. “I read poems on my phone when I wake up in the mornings,” she said. “It opens you up for the rest of the day, and suddenly your life becomes a little more observed. And when it becomes more observed, it can’t help but start to become more beautiful.” You can’t argue with that.