Billie Eilish has denounced social media and blogs as unreliable sources of information about her.
“It’s these definitive statements that they know are right. Somehow they know,” she said during an appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast with her brother Finneas. “This is the truth about Billie and you know it for it for a fact . You don’t know her, but you know that this is the truth and you have to tell everybody about it and then everyone’s going to believe it.
“That’s the other thing that freaks me out about the internet is how gullible it makes you. Anything I read on the internet, I believe. Me. And I know for a fact that’s stupid and I shouldn’t do that because I have proof that it’s not all true. Almost none of it’s true.”
Eilish went on to lament “small white lies that go over everybody’s heads.”
Despite referring to several things she has seen about herself online, Eilish insited she doesn't look at social media. "I’ve deleted it all off my phone,” she said.
Eilish said she feels as though she grew up at the perfect time – when the internet “wasn’t so internet-y” – and she was able to have a childhood. "I was doing stuff all the time.”
Eilish’s episode of the podcast will be available on March 27.
In a 2021 interview with the Los Angeles Times, the singer admitted it is challenging to ignore the vitriol online. “I want to hear what people have to say, and also, because I’ve grown up on the internet, I mostly agree with a lot of what the internet says,” said Eilish. “Some of the things that they make fun of people for are funny because they’re kinda true, right? Which then worries me because I’m like, ‘Oh, God, are the mean things [about me] actually true? And what are they?’ I want to know them! But I don’t want to know them, because what is that going to do for me? Nothing."
A year earlier, Eilish told the UK edition of GQ: “I try so hard not to read the hate. I don’t watch people’s [Instagram] Stories, I quit Twitter a couple of years ago, I look at the occasional meme and I feel bad that I don’t post more, as the fans want it, but I have nothing to post. Honestly. Zip."