Selena Gomez is the first woman to reach 400 million followers on Instagram

Just three months after she started posting on Instagram again, Selena Gomez is the most followed woman on the platform with 400 million followers. The ‘Only Murders in the Building’ star reached the milestone on March 17. Earlier, in February, she surpassed Kylie Jenner, who held the title of most-followed woman with 382 million followers.

While no other female celebrity has more followers than Gomez, she’s not the most followed person on all of Instagram. That title goes to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, who has 562 followers. He is followed by another footballer, Lionel Messi, who has 442 million people following his account. As for Jenner, she is now fourth overall. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is not far behind with 369 followers.

Gomez has been candid about her complicated relationship with Instagram in the past. In an interview with Vogue in 2021, the “Calm Down” singer revealed that she removed the photo-sharing platform’s app from her phone in 2019. Instead of posting things for herself, she sent her assistant things to post for her.

She came to the decision to leave the app after noticing it was 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 that I thought “I needed makeup and never wanted to be seen without it. The older I got, the more I evolved and realized I had to take control of what I felt. I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and feel confident. who I am.”

Fittingly, her latest post features two makeup-free selfies. She captioned the photos with “Violet chemistry,” a nod to the song of the same name on Miley Cyrus’ eighth studio album, “Endless Summer.”

“Taking a break from social media was the best decision I ever made for my mental health,” explains Gomez. “The unnecessary hate and comparisons disappeared as soon as I put my phone down. I’ll have moments where that weird feeling comes back, but now I have a much better relationship with myself.”