Shawn Mendes Says He Looked for Celebrity Comments on His Instagram

Shawn Mendes is getting honest about his relationship with social media.

The “Treat You Better” singer shared that he has taken breaks from Instagram in order to pay less attention to the outside noise.

“I’m a lot more secure in who I am, and it feels really nice to put something out that’s going to portray me that way,” Mendes, 26, shared in a candid chat for Interview magazine with fellow musician John Mayer, published Monday, October 14. “But sometimes I’m not sure the juice is worth the squeeze, being in the conversation all the time. It’s always on my mind, like, how are people going to react? I delete Instagram because I’m, like, ‘I’m not going to read the comments and be like, have any celebrities commented on this photo?’”

Mandes admitted that he usually redownloads the app and “I’m immediately looking again.”

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“I have a lot of acceptance and patience for my humanity,” he shared, “but at the same time, I really want to exist in a more authentic way.”

On his upcoming fifth studio album, Shawn, the Grammy winner has a song titled “Isn’t That Enough.” When the body of work is released on November 15, Mendes believes listeners will be able to hear his true, authentic self.

“If you’re asking for enough success, it’s never going to be enough,” he said. “But I think I’ve learned to have enough come from more places in my life.”

With help from therapy “and the experience of being burned and frozen,” Mendes said he has realized there is power in saying no.

Instead of committing to a massive tour in honor of the release of a new album, Mendes is focused on performing a handful of dates in theaters and seeing what comes next. (In July 2022, Mendes announced via Instagram that he was canceling his Wonder tour “to ground myself and come back stronger.”)

“When I say burned, I mean one end of the spectrum, and frozen the other,” he explained in his latest interview. “I am not doing this black-or-white, binary thing as much anymore, and that allows me to keep flowing. I would get onto a concept about life and how to live, and I’d hold that so tight for six months. At some point, it would all come crumbling down because I’d realize it was just one part of the picture, and then I’d basically redo that in a different way.”