{"id":622701,"date":"2026-04-23T06:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/622701\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T06:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:08:09","slug":"wnba-star-angel-reese-says-maturity-changed-how-she-uses-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/622701\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA Star Angel Reese Says Maturity Changed How She Uses Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

WNBA star Angel Reese<\/a>, 23, is drawing a clear line between reel life and real life.<\/p>\n

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On Wednesday’s episode of the “IMO” podcast<\/a>, Reese said she’s finally learned to protect her peace by tuning out what people say about her online.<\/p>\n

“I think I tried to have some type of normalization, of knowing where I’ve come from. I’ll never forget that. I don’t want to ever feel like I’m bigger than anything,” Reese told podcast hosts Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.<\/p>\n

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

“I love being able just to come home and turn my phone off, and just relax, and do the things that I enjoy,” she said.<\/p>\n

As she’s gotten older, she’s come to see social media as a distorted version of reality.<\/p>\n

“I think over the years it’s been hard for me to realize that, but I think the maturity of just understanding like, social media isn’t real,” Reese said.<\/p>\n

“I think we get so caught up in that. Years prior, I would comment back at things and let things continue to bother me,” she said, adding that she no longer tries to engage.<\/p>\n

Looking back at her rise to fame and the public scrutiny that followed, Reese said the way she was treated<\/a> was neither normal nor acceptable \u2014 but part of her “new reality.”<\/p>\n

She said the experience has made her more appreciative of the things she still has control over.<\/p>\n

Reese has previously opened up about the negative attention she received online as her profile rose.<\/p>\n

In July, she told ESPN<\/a> she was subjected to cyberbullying after winning the NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship with Louisiana State University in 2023.<\/p>\n

“And that was the first time I had seen negativity like that on social media. I’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,” Reese said.<\/p>\n

Reese isn’t the only one rethinking social media.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Mia Threapleton<\/a> said her mother, Kate Winslet, encouraged her to make a list of pros and cons for joining Instagram when she was 14.<\/p>\n

“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’m really happy that I don’t have it,” Threapleton said.<\/p>\n

In February, biohacker and tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson<\/a> said he’s been doing social media “fasts” for his health and wants an AI agent to serve as a buffer between him and his feed.<\/p>\n

“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,” he said.<\/p>\n

Beyond celebrities, a growing number of Gen Zers<\/a> are deciding they’re better off offline.<\/p>\n

They’re swapping smartphones for dumb phones<\/a>, using makeshift landlines<\/a>, and creating spaces where scrolling is off limits<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA star Angel Reese, 23, is drawing a clear line between reel life and real life. Loading audio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[9187,233563,49,48,233560,22403,233561,233562,182262,12853,13291,270,11812,233559,11497,82,7479,630,148611],"class_list":{"0":"post-622701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ai-agent","9":"tag-biohacker","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-con","13":"tag-feed","14":"tag-hard-way","15":"tag-maturity","16":"tag-mia-threapleton","17":"tag-phone","18":"tag-pro","19":"tag-reality","20":"tag-reese","21":"tag-small-thing","22":"tag-social-medium","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-time","25":"tag-wnba","26":"tag-wnba-star-angel-reese"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}