Dua Lipa has hit out at social media as a breeding ground for, “hate and anxiety,” as she spoke to BBC Breakfast whilst promoting her new single, Don’t Start Now.
Talking very openly, the 24-year-old singer said: “Some days I don’t read into the comments. Some days maybe I feel little bit more vulnerable and I dive in and I almost go looking for things I don’t want to see.”
The comments came after Dua Lipa teamed up with the likes of Hailee Steinfeld and Lana Del Rey to call for better mental health care in the music industry with the group of singers aiming to raise £100,000 and help to raise awareness of mental health charities My Black Dog – a peer-to-peer online mental health charity and CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).
Whilst Dua Lipa mentioned in the interview that she loves social media for allowing her to have an ‘amazing’ platform, she has been forced to look away when trolling gets out of control, saying: “Social media can be such an amazing tool and it can be so fun to share things but at the same time it’s almost a breeding ground for hate and anxiety.”
Continuing Dua Lipa said: “People feel like they can say things because they’re hiding behind a computer screen and for me it’s important to use social media in bite sizes – as long as it makes me feel good, and the second it doesn’t, I like to take some time away from it.”
The multi Grammy Award winning singing concluded by saying she is on a mission to make sure social media is a platform for sharing positivity and encourage kindness. “I feel like that’s something we should all do, we should encourage kindness and protect our fans and protect ourselves – just be nicer to one another. I feel like we’d all have a much better experience on social media if that was the case.
“You can’t change everyone’s mind on that, and some people use it as a form of release, in whatever way that may be – sometimes at the expense of others. But it’s baby steps. Hopefully we can try and make it a much safer experience for everyone,” she said.
Dua Lipa joins a number of prominent celebrities including Millie Bobby Brown who recently told GLAMOUR UK that, “I want to combat negativity on social media – it’s a disease.”
We couldn’t applaud Dua Lipa more for calling BS on the trolls. Let’s all join her in spreading a little kindness.