Millie Bobby Brown Says Social Media Negatively Affects Her Mental Health: 'Anxiety Is Still a Huge Battle I'm Dealing With Today'

Anxiety and mental health is a huge battle that Millie Bobby Brown said she's still fighting today.

During her acceptance speech at Glamour's 2023 Women of the Year Awards Event in New York City on Tuesday, the Stranger Things star explained more about how her mental health's been affected over the years.

"Growing up in the industry, I felt very aware of the feeling of rejection," Brown, 19, said. "As I was getting older, I started reading a variety of the things people were saying about me and felt that same feeling of rejection, like when I didn't get an acting job. I felt alone in that feeling like no one else knew what I was going through."

"The influence of social media and the press had a negative effect on my mental health and anxiety is still a huge battle I'm dealing with today," she continued. "Luckily, with the love and support from my friends and family, I feel strong enough. I do not feel alone anymore."

As Brown continued her speech, she said she's now using her platform to advocate for other child actors and young people struggling with that same feeling of loneliness.

"Social media can be a detrimental place to the minds of my generation and the ones that come after. Mental health is not a taboo topic. It's a necessary one. Remember, we are human beings," she said.

She added: "For eight years, I wanted to sparkle, flourish and break out of the box everyone tried putting me in. I decided to be quiet when taking interviews and not say anything that could be twisted because I was scared. But that fire and free spirit in me was bursting to come out. It didn't take long for me to finally realize I didn't care, that who I was was enough."

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Brown recently shared with Glamour that her fiancé Jake Bongiovi helped play a role in her reclaiming her self-love.

The actress recalled how she could embrace her true self with Bongiovi, 21. She said: “When I met Jake, I just felt I could be loud. He embraced that and encouraged that. And I fell in love with myself while being with him.”

"I was like, 'Why do you love me? And then he listed all these things that I hated about myself. I was like, 'You see good in those things?' And he was like, 'Of course I do,'” she recalled.

"Those are things that I love about myself now," she continued. "He was a really big, huge part of me loving myself and becoming a woman. It was like, 'Wow, I really love this person because he allows me to love myself.'"

Brown, who got engaged to Bongiovi in April, affirmed that they both have the support of their families as they take the next step in their relationship.

"We were modeled by wonderful, loving relationships," she explained. "So it's something that we both had that mutual drive for. His family were so wonderfully accepting of me and embraced me, and it's so nice to find a second family in that."