The Real Reason Pete Davidson Deleted All His Social Media

Pete Davidson pictured not caring what you think. Image by Getty Images
For once, Pete Davidson seems to be onto (into?) something.
And we don’t mean Ariana Grande.
If you haven’t heard, he recently left social media. To deflate your suspicions — there is no internet-outage-apocalypse. Millennials may also speculate that his abrupt departure from the cyber world is just a ploy to elope with Ariana to another planet. But, he assures us that his sudden move has nothing to do with his superstar fiance. Wherever he may be, we want to come with.
According to PEW research, 95% of teens have access to a smart phone, 45% admit to being online almost constantly, and 24% agree that social media has a negative effect on their lives. One girl aged 15 told Pew, “It provides a fake image of someone’s life. It sometimes makes me feel that their life is perfect when it is not.”
Davidson can relate to these sentiments as he made himself and his fiancé out to be the poster children of perfect relationship bliss. Clearly, their coquettish comments on each other’s Instagram feeds have been subject to public backlash. This isn’t the first time a celebrity has walked off the face of the earth. In 2015, Lena Dunham left Twitter for her managers to front because she felt ‘the space became too negative.’
As he put it so eloquently on his Instagram story: “No there’s nothing wrong. No nothing happened. No there’s nothing cryptic about anything. I just don’t wanna be on Instagram anymore. Or any social media platform. The internet is an evil place and it doesn’t make me feel good. Why should I spend any time on negative energy when my real life is f**king lit.” Um, how can we get on your level, Pete? And will Ariana use these words as lyrical inspiration for her next big hit?

Image by Pete Davidson's Instagram Story
We are not the gatekeeper of these unanswered questions. But, if all bets are on, we can predict that a break from social media will have their love lives soaring through new heights.
Bonnie is an intern at The Forward.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Make a Passover Gift Today!
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Ben Shapiro, Emily Damari among torch lighters for Israel’s Independence Day ceremony
-
Fast Forward Larry David’s ‘My Dinner with Adolf’ essay skewers Bill Maher’s meeting with Trump
-
Sports Israeli mom ‘made it easy’ for new NHL player to make history
-
Communications The Forward Announces Gifts of Domains Yiddish.com and Yiddish.org by Elie Hirschfeld and his wife Sarah Hirschfeld, MD
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.