‘The world is a noisy place’: Fearne Cotton says social media is driving people ‘mad’

The presenter says it has become ‘a crime’ not to have an opinion

Kate Ng
Saturday 08 October 2022 03:25 EDT
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Fearne Cotton on fashion

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Fearne Cotton has said that while she “quite happily doesn’t have an opinion on a lot of things”, she believes social media is driving people “mad”.

The TV presenter added that the negative effects of social media has led to society losing “the plot”.

Cotton, 41, opened up about the objectification she has suffered throughout her career and how she deals with her online presence.

Speaking to The i newspaper, she said: “It’s a nightmare… we’ve lost the plot.

“We’re driving ourselves mad trying to imbibe all this information, make sense of it, have an opinion. It’s insanity.

“The world is a noisy place at the moment. Everyone’s pissed off. There is a lot of aggression being channelled in the wrong direction for the wrong reasons.”

Cotton said she deals with it all by “tuning out of everything”.

“I’m not going to stand on my social media soapbox arguing about something. I’m not interested,” she continued.

“It has somehow become a crime if you don’t have an opinion. I quite happily don’t have an opinion on a lot of things. I’m still questioning everything. I think I was questioning too little before.”

The broadcaster became the first regular female presenter of the Radio 1 Chart Show, before going on to present her own Radio 1 show which aired every weekday morning from 2009 to 2015.

She joined BBC Radio in 2016. Two years later, she began presenting her podcast Happy Place, which has included guests such as Dawn French, Hillary Clinton and Tom Daley.

Elsewhere in her interview, Cotton addressed “weird” headlines that accompanied interviews with her in the media when she started becoming a household name.

Asked if she felt objectified, she said: “I don’t know if I felt objectified; I felt as though they were writing about someone else.

“I did feel a discomfort about that, because it was embarrassing. My grandparents were alive in that era – that was mortifying for them to read.”

Additional reporting by PA

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