{"id":49466,"date":"2026-04-23T05:41:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/wnba-star-angel-reese-23-says-she-learned-the-hard-way-to-stop-engaging-with-social-media\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T05:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:41:16","slug":"wnba-star-angel-reese-23-says-she-learned-the-hard-way-to-stop-engaging-with-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/wnba-star-angel-reese-23-says-she-learned-the-hard-way-to-stop-engaging-with-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA star Angel Reese, 23, says she learned the hard way to stop engaging with social media"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69e9877ca98bc8fdc096dc8d?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Angel Reese.\"\/><figcaption>Angel Reese says she is protecting her peace in the age of social media.<\/p>\n<p>Alexa Alejandro\/FIBA via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>WNBA star Angel Reese, 23, says she no longer lets social media comments get to her.<\/li>\n<li>&quot;Years prior, I would comment back at things and let things continue to bother me,&quot; she said.<\/li>\n<li>Now, she avoids engaging and focuses on the small, everyday moments that bring her joy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>WNBA star Angel Reese, 23, is drawing a clear line between reel life and real life.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday&#039;s episode of the &quot;IMO&quot; podcast, Reese said she&#039;s finally learned to protect her peace by tuning out what people say about her online.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think I tried to have some type of normalization, of knowing where I&#039;ve come from. I&#039;ll never forget that. I don&#039;t want to ever feel like I&#039;m bigger than anything,&quot; Reese told podcast hosts Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.<\/p>\n<p>Reese said she tries to practice gratitude every day and finds joy in the small things, like spending time with her loved ones.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I love being able just to come home and turn my phone off, and just relax, and do the things that I enjoy,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>As she&#039;s gotten older, she&#039;s come to see social media as a distorted version of reality.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think over the years it&#039;s been hard for me to realize that, but I think the maturity of just understanding like, social media isn&#039;t real,&quot; Reese said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think we get so caught up in that. Years prior, I would comment back at things and let things continue to bother me,&quot; she said, adding that she no longer tries to engage.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back at her rise to fame and the public scrutiny that followed, Reese said the way she was treated was neither normal nor acceptable \u2014 but part of her &quot;new reality.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>She said the experience has made her more appreciative of the things she still has control over.<\/p>\n<p>Reese has previously opened up about the negative attention she received online as her profile rose.<\/p>\n<p>In July, she told ESPN she was subjected to cyberbullying after winning the NCAA Women&#039;s Basketball National Championship with Louisiana State University in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;And that was the first time I had seen negativity like that on social media. I&#039;ve had a huge following before, but it skyrocketed to millions, and it was bigger than basketball, when they were finding my address, my car, and I had to change my whole lifestyle,&quot; Reese said.<\/p>\n<p>Reese isn&#039;t the only one rethinking social media.<\/p>\n<p>In 2025, Mia Threapleton said her mother, Kate Winslet, encouraged her to make a list of pros and cons for joining Instagram when she was 14.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The cons completely outweighed the pros for me. That was quite a clarifying moment. Since then, the more time I spend in this world, the more I&#039;m really happy that I don&#039;t have it,&quot; Threapleton said.<\/p>\n<p>In February, biohacker and tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson said he&#039;s been doing social media &quot;fasts&quot; for his health and wants an AI agent to serve as a buffer between him and his feed.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I never want to see the raw feed. I want an AI agent to read it for me, strip the engagement metrics that hijack my judgment, filter the rage, and return only what I actually came for,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond celebrities, a growing number of Gen Zers are deciding they&#039;re better off offline.<\/p>\n<p>They&#039;re swapping smartphones for dumb phones, using makeshift landlines, and creating spaces where scrolling is off limits.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Angel Reese says she is protecting her peace in the age of social media. Alexa Alejandro\/FIBA via Getty Images WNBA star Angel Reese, 23, says she no longer lets social media comments get to her. &quot;Years prior, I would comment back at things and let things continue to bother me,&quot; she said. Now, she avoids [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}