Millie Bobby Brown, who found fame on the hit Netflix show Stranger Things, has already had a seriously impressive career at only 18 years old. With two Emmy nominations up her sleeve and experience as a producer on the Netflix mystery film Enola Homes, which she also starred in, it’s no wonder she is considered one of the most influential young people around right now.

But with such influence comes inevitable pressure, something Brown has opened up about in a new interview with Allure. Speaking about the experience of being in the limelight since the age of 12 and becoming one of the first Gen Z celebrities to grow up with social media, Brown says that she completely reevaluated her relationship with social media due to trolling and harassment.

“It’s really hard to be hated on when you don’t know who you are yet,” Brown told Allure, explaining that she received constant judgment for expressing herself honestly on the internet and trying out new things.

She also admitted to struggling with loneliness, particularly at the start of her career: “Even as a young person, I always felt like I didn’t quite belong in every room I was in. I also struggle with loneliness a bit.”

The Stranger Things star has over 57 million followers on Instagram and she explains that she has deleted all of the social media apps off her phone, allowing someone else to handle them, largely due to the bullying she faced online. Last year, the TikTok star Hunter Ecimovic, who Brown says she was at one point in an “unhealthy situation” with, went live on Instagram to make some seriously harmful claims about the actor and making sexually inappropriate comments about her.

“I felt very vulnerable,” she says, recalling the incident, explaining that she was filming season four of Stranger Things when it happened. “No one on the set knew I was going through this. So it was kind of nice to be able to just deal with that myself and no one else knew. Then it was harder when the whole world knew.”

Ecimovic did issue an apology for his behaviour, stating: “The livestream, I am sorry for. I’m not proud of at all how I spoke, it sounded very immature, looked horrible on my family, it looked horrible on me, it looked horrible on my friends.”

“I never groomed her. I never put pressure on her to like me,” he added. Brown didn’t respond to the comments herself but her team labelled the remarks “irresponsible, offensive, and hateful.”

Ultimately, Brown feels like she has found ways to remedy her relationship with social media and herself, telling Allure: “It was a year of healing. When you get publicly humiliated this way, I felt so out of control and powerless. Walking away and knowing that I’m worth everything and this person didn’t take anything from me, it felt very empowering. It felt like my life had finally turned a page and that I actually had ended a chapter that felt so fucking long.”

Despite her young age, Brown has a clear mission in everything she does, from her acting career, to her beauty brand Florence by Mills, as well as her work as a goodwill ambassador for Unicef. “Young girls deserve an education. Young people everywhere deserve equal rights,” she said. “[You] deserve to love the people that you want to love. Be the people that you want to be and achieve the dreams that you want to achieve. That’s my message.”

Images: Getty