Lorde has described ditching social media as a “huge decision philosophically”. While promoting her third studio album Solar Power recently, the New Zealand-based singer-songwriter revealed she had permanently deleted all social media apps from her phone in 2018 apart from The New York Times’ Cooking site. Speaking about her decision to steer away from the likes of Twitter and Instagram in a chat for the October 2021 issue of U.S. Vogue, Lorde – real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor – shared that it was something she had thought about for a long time. “I’m not, like, lurking on a Finsta (fake Instagram). I’m really off,” she maintained. “I think I was known for having my finger on the pulse, so it was actually a huge decision philosophically for me to step back from that. But I started to see the phone as a portal. I can’t keep going through that portal, in the same way that I wouldn’t just take mushrooms all these moments of a day. It’s too deep a tunnel.” Lorde went on to note that taking time away from the Internet has freed her to focus on her music as well as the natural world around her. But the biggest impact has been on her mental health. “I could sense that it would be very bad for the work and for me if I stayed online. I don’t think I’ve met too many people for whom social media is a net positive. It’s producing crazy chemicals, forming crazy neural pathways that are not rooted in positivity,” the 24-year-old continued. “You don’t want to be the person shaking their finger, and I’m totally aware that it’s an immense privilege, a social privilege and kind of an economic privilege to be able to abstain. But I think we’ve got to be upfront about the things that are making us sick as a society.”