Jennifer Aniston became famous in a simpler time, the 1990s, which she still remembers fondly. She’s always been something of a Luddite, and it took her years to finally join Instagram. She was pretty good at IG, although I would guess that she has a team (or perhaps just one person) handling her IG posts and telling her how to do what. She has not embraced TikTok, and I don’t really blame her? I’m not really on TikTok either, although I do lurk and I do see some of the TT stuff on Twitter. Well, Aniston was asked recently if she will ever start a TikTok account and her answer was pretty reasonable.
Jennifer Aniston may have joined Instagram, but TikTok would be one step too far for the actress.
“I don’t have TikTok, nor will I ever. I just won’t,” Aniston told ET’s Deidre Behar, before quipping, “I’m not gonna subscribe to one more thing that is gonna ruin my life or somebody else’s life.”
All jokes aside, and despite Aniston’s popular Instagram presence, she said that she keeps social media “at arm’s length” for good reason.
“It could suck you in and you’ve wasted hours of your life,” she said. “I can’t believe sometimes when I found myself in an absolute wormhole of dog, puppy videos and rescue animals, and babies, and cats. That’s the stuff I enjoy. But then there’s some stuff online I just don’t wanna see.”
Also, Aniston said, “I don’t think we are were designed to take in the amount of information at the speed and the rate that we do these days. I just don’t think it’s good for us. I don’t think it’s healthy.”
For Aniston, the unhealthiest part of social media is “the mental illness that kids are suffering from because of the compare and despair.”
“It’s so hard to be a teenager these days,” she said. “We are so hard on ourselves, and kids are so mean too.” What Aniston does post on social will always be her real self, not a highly filtered version. “I just think it’s best to just be who you are,” she said. “We’ve got good days. We’ve got bad days. We have good hair days. We’ve got s**tty hair days. We’ve got good skin days, bad skin days. It’s a mixed bag. It’s also just so unrealistic to try to sell something that doesn’t feel authentic.”
While I’m a general Aniston Skeptic, I don’t have an issue with anything she says here? She became famous before social media and she’s embraced some of it up to a point, but she’s set some boundaries too. The social media wormholes are a tremendous time-suck. Social media platforms, especially Instagram and TikTok, have really f–ked up a lot of young people, probably in darker ways which we’ll only learn years from now. Now, do I also think that Aniston prefers the “highly filtered” version of life? For sure. Just a few years ago, she complained because Hollywood was becoming less glamorous because of TikTokers.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – FEBRUARY 24: Jennifer Aniston wearing Celine arrives at the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on February 24, 2024 in Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 850578129, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jennifer Aniston, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – FEBRUARY 24: Jennifer Aniston wearing Celine arrives at the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on February 24, 2024 in Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 850578313, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jennifer Aniston, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 24: Jennifer Aniston attends the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on February 24, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.,Image: 852505951, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jennifer Aniston, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 24: Jennifer Aniston attends the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on February 24, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.,Image: 852508031, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jennifer Aniston, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 24: Jennifer Aniston attends the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on February 24, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.,Image: 852509979, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jennifer Aniston, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon
I am meh about her, but I agree with all she is saying here.
I am 43, and I am so glad I was a teen before internet, and in my 20’s social media weren’t around. I see the pressure on my younger colleagues, and I don’t know how can they survive.
I agree with you 100% and I’m also about the same age. Deleted all my socials more than 10 years ago. Love emails, texting, and in-person interactions.
And Jen’s absolutely right that it’s on a mental-illness level. Some countries are rightly looking at banning SM for under-16s, for example. Brains are warped due to social media and there’s so much research on that.
Just to add, I don’t count Reddit and Twitter as social media. I had an anonymous/dummy account on Twitter for years before a certain billionaire ruined it, and it let me stay up to date with my fav writers, etc. Now I just check out Reddit for that “crowdsourced” info on things you can’t get anywhere else, like from blogs and articles or whatever. It’s not about posting selfies or sharing holiday pics.
I agree. Tiktok is not for my time. I got good ol facebook which is so boring nothing’s happening, nobody posts like they did anymore, but I like marketplace. IG is ok but im not a regular and both these apps make me waste hours. So ivebeen cutting back. And definitely not getting into tiktok
I never thought Jennifer Aniston and I would have something in common.
She doesn’t need filters because of whatever happened to her face that made it be super tight and shiny … she had a facelift right? Because she looks so different but not in a naturally aging kind of way
Is it necessary to comment on her appearance with speculation of cosmetic surgery?
Yes, because she is putting it out there that she is authentic and doesn’t need filters when she clearly had her whole face stretched.
I agree with Chaine on this one. She is certainly not the only one or even close to the worst one, but I do think there is something particularly insidious about these women who’ve had all sorts of work done preach about authenticity. They are part of the reason that young people can be so hard on themselves — it’s hard to compare yourself to someone who gets work done + gets airbrushed for a living.
Also agree with Chaine. Her facial work is obvious. And it’s not from “yoga, vitamin water, and aveeno skincare.”
Twee, I agree with you. I think women in general get criticized for their looks because people don’t have anything more valid or meaningful to say.
Yep, the work is very obvious, and she has that “surprised” look in her eyes which is very telling. The pressure on actresses to chase youth is very real so I don’t have a problem with the actual work that was done, but just don’t lie about it. It’s insulting the public by thinking we’re too dumb to know the difference, and it’s arrogance based on lies that she’s just sooooo genetically superior to other women that SHE doesn’t need surgery.
Well said!
Question: Why is she holding out the leg slit of her dress in one of the pictures?
The algorithms are filters – she just chooses to use her own filters. And the thing is that 99.99999% of social media content is 100% unimportant to everyday life – if you don’t have filters/boundaries/limits you’re going to go bananas.
If I remember correctly, she joined instagram because of her new show’s promotion at the time, The Morning Show. The social media is part of the contracts now for promotional work. If and when tiktok becomes more important for that, she is gonna get tiktok even if she doesn’t want to. She was talking sh*t about social media for years, still when you get paid millions and one of the conditions is social media content, you are gonna get into it. Most of the time, they get a social media team for that anyway, you personally don’t need to spend time there.
I don’t blame her for avoiding Tik-Tok until she has to.
I can handle Instagram, but the way Tik Tok videos are designed seems overwhelming to me — i.e captions, voiceovers, images of feet walking).
Instagram, by contrast, seems simpler to handle haha. Or maybe that’s just my imagination. I know Instagram copies features of Tik-Tok, but you can still tell everyone insists on being old-school on it (posting a regular video where you’re talking about something conversational or humorous, as opposed to political, while making a cup of coffee on your espresso machine).
I guess my central thesis is that Tik-Tok seems overstimulating haha.
I agree, I really don’t like TikTok, it’s too much. I do use instagram and facebook still, but I have my feed pretty curated at this point to be what she’s talking about – cute puppy videos and stuff.
I’m GenX and I love TikTok. I’ve never posted and never will but I learn all kinds of interesting things on that app. The algorithm does get a little screwy at times but when you get into North Sea TikTok and gardening TikTok, BookTok and royal commentary TikTok, it’s a very entertaining place to be.
TikTok doesn’t need Jennifer Aniston so she should feel free to ignore it and go do more pushups or whatever.
Definitely older than Gen X and love TikTok. Agree with Amy. Have also found the site really good for introducing me to artists / musicians previously unknown to me.
@Amy – I agree.
The whitewashing of the damage that Meta has done and Snapchat continues to do while vilifying Tik Tok is ridiculous and intentional.
“Caveats aside, this dataset indicates that there are now seven social media platforms that each claim one billion or more monthly active users.
For context, FOUR of these seven platforms are owned by Meta.”
If you curate your feed properly it is by far the best social media app out there. So much creative content and I feel like there’s something for everyone on that platform: science, music, dancing, social justice, knitting, sewing, makeup, law, cats and more cats…..
Also agree with Twin Falls about Meta which is why the whole “China is accessing our data through TikTok” as a reason to ban the platform was always dubious at best. I guess US companies mining our data and spying on us is A-Ok, but when it’s a Chinese company we gotta shut ‘er down. I still think it’s more about people in power attempting to stop movement-building among the youth than it is about China stealing our info but JMO….
Lol Kitten.. I lead a team of data scientists and work on algorithmic recommendations and personalized feeds for a major international company. I know well what TikTok does on the backend – what they do with data in transition and at rest. Their servers are in China and they are not beholden to GDPR, for example. Knowing how they treat their data, there is no way I would ever trust them. It has nothing to do with how you curate your feed. Also, It’s not some conspiracy. Lol.
Yep, China IS assessing your data through TikTok. You don’t have to become a anti-govt crank to accept that, along with your correct enough assessment that US companies do that. And since we’re still a nation-state China doing it versus domestic companies doing it matters exponentially more. Also: pfft, movement building among the youth. Hilarious.
I’m Gen X and I love TikTok. I stopped posting regularly on FB during the pandemic. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica stuff and the general tone on the app since 2016 I have felt just kind of dirty if I use it. Like I’m contributing to a company that’s basically evil. TT is so different from FB, and frankly just more enjoyable and entertaining to use. The algorithm adjusts to each person and I like what shows up for me. I’m informed of news and world events often way before they hit mainstream media. I cry everyday just because people share real emotions and experiences. It makes me feel connected to the world, instead of just the people I know. At first I didn’t post, I just watched but now I mostly post about my pets. There’s a niche for everyone.
Just throwing this out there and not attacking anyone’s view on TT (Glossop, thanks for your insights; very pertinent), but apart from the potential wholesomeness, there’s the issue of consuming so much video content.
I read The Shallows (Nicolas Carr) years back and I’m now always trying to just do one thing at a time when I’m on my computer, train/extend my focus, and limit how much passive activity I do online (endless surfing on YouTube).
So TikTok is another distraction I don’t need. I subscribe to a million newsletters on topics that interest me and reading through them, plus my fav new sites, plus Reddit, is enough for me. But whatever works for you; no judgment.
Celebrities aren’t authentic, but I think I prefer the inauthenticity of a big celebrity to the inauthenticity of an influencer. Maybe an influencer is too average so I feel more pressured as to why I’m not choosing to live the same way. The supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington seemed too out of reach to actually feel THAT bad about myself. Ditto for the cast of Friends, even if they weren’t supermodels. And it would never occur to me to try and do whatever Tom Cruise does. But an influencer is so alarmingly basic, I start to think to myself I should try harder to make that weekend trip to Paris or buy the latest hair extensions. I don’t think I feel the same pressure from watching Gisele Bundchen, even though, in theory, she’s probably doing the same thing.
That said, maybe it was always easier for me to read tips from Vogue on how to inauthentic as opposed to watching a video about it.
Most celebrities are inauthentic. Photoshop, botox, face lift, artificially whitened teeth, artificially tanned skin, artificially colored hair, artificially straightened hair, nose job, eye job, etc. . . . ALL of which Anniston appears to have done.
Maybe I think (major) celebrities look better haha, even after getting all this work done.
Influencers still look sort of average. Despite the plastic surgery, something about the really big celebrities still seems somewhat unique. Doesn’t really make sense, but maybe the baseline from which they’re starting is better than the average influencer’s. For example, if Jennifer Lopez is doing something to her face to look better, I wouldn’t be surprised. But the baseline or canvas from which she’s starting is already pretty good. So I’d rather deal with her inauthenticity than an influencer’s. It’s pretty obvious Nicole Kidman has had work done, but she has some kind of larger-than-life charisma that makes her inauthenticity more palatable for me. Influencers still seem basic despite the BBL implants, hair extensions, lip fillers, skin care, etc.
Since big celebrities start with a good canvas, I guess I feel less compelled to feel bad when I look at them. Whereas the basic-ness of influencers makes me feel FOMO or something weird.
In the fallout from the mess that was Brangelina, I bet Jennifer knows a whole lot more about Brad that she isn’t saying. I’d love to hear it. It could possibly help Angelina out by telling us what she really went through while married to him.
Aniston would never assist Jolie. Never ever. She is team Brad.
It is weird how the “will Brad and Jen reunite” stories just ended.
Why would she assist Angelina when she has zero relationship with her? She actually was married to Brad and had feelings for him. She met Angelina once. Jennifer seems like a loyal friend but she was never friends with Angelina. That doesn’t make her a bad person.
She also doesn’t need to discuss any dark parts of her marriage just because Angelina and Brad had a horrible ending.
The ability to look away is another kind of privilege.
She can look away, & stay safe in her white world & never need to change thing.
Social media has brought too many issues to the forefront where we morally should not be looking away.
I don’t think you need to go to social media to understand what’s going on in the world. All you have to do is turn on the tv or go to any news site, and you’ll see it. We each choose our own way consuming this news, whether that’s turning on the news or reading a newspaper or going to Twitter. but I don’t think social media is delivering to me something that is any different from what I could consume in another medium. I think it’s strange that social media might be considered a superior form of consuming all the depressing stuff going on in the world.
I’m not rich like Aniston, and even I need a break from social media. I can’t look at my phone all the time without feeling fatigued.
What the media is showing fits a narrative that is often not the actual truth.
That’s why TikTok is being attacked so much because it gives people a way to communicate and learn direct from people instead of everything being filtered through different channels to control a narrative.
I understand that social media provides alternative narratives, but I still don’t think one has to be clocked into it to know that the world is a disaster right now. In fact, there is so much depressing news everywhere I need a break from it. Even if I turn on CNN or network news and even if it’s giving only one perspective, common sense tells me the world is a dumpster fire. Countries at war is enough to clue me in that the world is on fire.
Nobody cares, boomer.