Tom Holland is disappointed with how journalists covered his decision to leave social media last year. The Crowded Room actor appeared on Monday’s (July 10th) episode of the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast and said he didn’t appreciate journalists portraying him as “having a nervous breakdown in New York,” after announcing he was taking a break from social media platforms.
“I was having a really hard time with the job just because of how taxing it was, the emotional capacity that I was having to get to every day,” Holland said about filming the new Apple TV+ thriller. “And I decided to delete my Instagram because I just felt like I was so addicted to this kind of false version of my life that it was just taking over.”
The Spider-Man: No Way Home star said he couldn’t stop scrolling. “It was becoming a problem,” he said. “I was just obsessed with it. And I was obsessed to find out what people were saying.”
“I decided to make an announcement, which unfortunately we have to do,” Holland continued. “I tried to position myself and say like, 'I'm taking a break from social media because I feel like my mental health will benefit from it.' And the thing that really upset me is the press ran with that and they tried to make out that I was having this mental breakdown. And what upset me was if I was having a mental breakdown, that's not for you to report on.”
“They took the story in the wrong direction,” he added. “They painted this negative light on mental health. Rather than saying, 'It's okay that he's doing it, so we should all feel okay to do it too,' they were saying, 'Oh look, he's not the perfect happy-go-lucky kid you think he is. He's having a nervous breakdown in New York.' I think that that was a really unfair line of journalism.”