Jennifer Aniston Wants Girls To Stop Taking Selfies And Put Down Their Phones


Jennifer Aniston is no Kim Kardashian. The former Friends star was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the Giffoni Film Fest in Italy, and she has some words of wisdom for the kids and teens at Europe’s largest film festival for children. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Jennifer Aniston told the young crowd that they should consider taking a break from social media and look out at the world instead.

“I think we need to empower women to not just be about dresses and beauty and selfies. We need to start having conversations and put our phones down and get out of social media, take social media breaks. That’s why we’re not seeing the right stories being told, because everyone is stuck in their phones.”

Aniston also had a lot to say about the cyberbullying problem. While she told her young audience that they should work together with friends to take down bullies, she admitted that it is much harder today due to social media and the fact that bullying now continues into adulthood, something she knows about firsthand.

“Now with the Internet, it is endless, and it is a bunch of anonymous bullies that can sort of be stalking. We used to think that it was just in childhood that we would be bullied or made fun of…And now that we are grown up, the Internet is filled with them. And they’re cowardly, and they’re anonymous and they hide behind their computers, so it’s about not allowing it to penetrate and have again, put your computers down and have conversations.”

Jennifer Aniston has been very vocal about the fact that she is not on social media. She does not have personal accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Last year, the 47-year-old actress told People that she briefly tried taking over the Instagram account for her beauty company, Living Proof, and she did not enjoy the experience at all.

“I was so stressed out, sweating bullets,” Jennifer told the magazine. “It was too much pressure. For these Kardashians, it’s a career!”

Aniston also said she is sad about the negative effect social media seems to be having on today’s kids.

“Kids aren’t speaking to each other anymore,” Jennifer said. “I was with friends of ours from Vermont and their two kids don’t have an iPhone or an iPad. They were 9 and 12 and were the most interesting young adults. Seeing other kids on their [phones] all the time, it makes me sad.”

Jennifer Aniston recently revealed that she feels hounded and bullied by the press as they stalk her to get photos to put on social media. In a powerful essay for the Huffington Post, Aniston revealed that she is constantly followed by the paparazzi as they try to get photos of her and her husband Justin Theroux.

In her essay, Aniston also slammed the “objectification and scrutiny we put women through” in today’s culture, calling it “absurd and disturbing.”

“The way I am portrayed by the media is simply a reflection of how we see and portray women in general, measured against some warped standard of beauty,” Aniston wrote.

As for those constant selfies that celebs like the Kardashians constantly post? Jennifer Aniston is having none of it. In an interview with Self, Jennifer even said she would give up her beloved Mexican food for a year before she would post selfies on Instagram for a year.

“I don’t have Instagram,” Jennifer said. “And I’m not a fan of selfies. I don’t understand them. I feel like there’s enough out there, why add to it?”

Take a look at the video below to see Jennifer Aniston talking about why she doesn’t use social media.

[Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images for Giffoni Film Festival]

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