Just three months after she returned to posting on Instagram, Selena Gomez is the most followed woman on the platform with 400 million followers. The “Only Murders in the Building” star hit the milestone number on March 17. Previously, in February, she surpassed Kylie Jenner, who used to hold the most followed woman title with 382 million followers.
While no other female celebrities have more followers than Gomez, she’s not the most followed person on all of Instagram. That title goes to soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, who has 562 followers. He’s followed by another soccer player, Lionel Messi, who has 442 million people keeping up with his account. As for Jenner, she’s now in fourth place overall. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson isn’t far behind her with 369 followers.
On March 19, the actor shared a carousel of photos on Instagram from different fan interactions she’s had over the years alongside a big thank you to everyone who helped her reach such a major milestone on the app. “Wishing I could hug all 400 million of you 🤍,” she captioned her post.
Gomez has been candid in the past about her complicated relationship with Instagram. In a 2021 interview with Vogue, the “Calm Down” singer revealed that she deleted the photo-sharing platform’s app from her phone in 2019. Instead of posting things for herself, she would send her assistant things to post for her.
She came to the decision to step away from the app after she noticed it affecting her mental health. “At one point Instagram became my whole world, and it was really dangerous,” she told InStyle in 2022. “In my early 20s, I felt like I wasn’t pretty enough. There was a whole period in my life when I thought I needed makeup and never wanted to be seen without it. The older I got, the more I evolved and realized that I needed to take control of what I was feeling. I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and feel confident to be who I am.”
Fittingly, her latest post features two makeup free selfies. She captioned the pics, “Violet chemistry,” a nod to the song of the same name on Miley Cyrus‘s eighth studio album, “Endless Summer.”
“Taking a break from social media was the best decision that I’ve ever made for my mental health,” Gomez explained. “The unnecessary hate and comparisons went away once I put my phone down. I’ll have moments where that weird feeling will come back, but now I have a much better relationship with myself.”