Selena Gomez was bullied during her time at the Disney Channel.
Selena Gomez
The 'Heart Wants What It Wants' hitmaker started her career at the television network and has branded it "the biggest high school in the world".
She said: "I think he understood that I knew what it meant to be bullied. I went to the biggest high school in the world, which is the Disney Channel. And my mom had a lot of history dealing with [bullying]. I heard her stories growing up. She's very open about it."
Whilst her mother Mandy added: "When I was growing up, I was always bullied because I was the outsider, the weird girl with the purple hair and combat boots. Then I was a teen mom. You get really judged. I had counselors telling me how I'd ruined my life, [Selena's] life and how I ruined the father's life, even though he participated."
And the 24-year-old actress and singer admits social media has changed a lot since she first became famous and confesses to deleting Instagram from her phone "at least once a week" as she hates the negative comments posted on the photo sharing app.
In a joint interview with her mother Mandy for the New York Times newspaper, she added: "When I was on 'Wizards of Waverly Place', we didn't have social media really. Twitter had just begun. Every Friday, I'd get to do a live taping in front of all these little kids and make their life. That's when I was the happiest. Then, as I got older, I watched it go from zero to a hundred. So I'm actually glad it took us this long to create this project because it's so relevant now ...
"You can't avoid [reading the comments] sometimes. I delete the app from my phone at least once a week. You fixate on the [negative] ones. They're not like, 'You're ugly.' It's like they want to cut to your soul. Imagine all the insecurities that you already feel about yourself and having someone write a paragraph pointing out every little thing - even if it's just physical."
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