Alden Ehrenreich has called social media the climate disaster of culture and admitted he has never been on TikTok. The actor shared his views during a recent podcast conversation about his career and his barely used Instagram account. He also spoke about what endless scrolling does to artists and audiences. His phone, it turns out, is as empty as his posting history.

While most stars treat social media as a second job, Ehrenreich treats it like a party where the invitation never arrives, and he has stopped checking the mailbox.

Alden Ehrenreich believes social media has done lasting damage to the way people live and create. He compared it to a global emergency while referencing the documentary The Social Dilemma. He also described scrolling as a daily reminder of everything a person is missing.

“It’s the climate disaster of culture basically,” he told the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

He then added, “I do think hopefully young people are starting to like be less enchanted with the culture around it."

Ehrenreich revealed on Happy Sad Confused that his Instagram account has just one photo, leaving him feeling he must either fully commit to the platform or walk away. He also argued that young artists increasingly think about what will sell even while creating their work. To illustrate how deeply social media has changed the way artists promote themselves, he recalled a friend's joke about Bob Dylan having to announce a new song to his Instagram followers, as though even an artist of Dylan's stature must now rely on social media to reach an audience. Despite his concerns, Ehrenreich remains hopeful that regulation and age restrictions could help. Fittingly, his phone wallpaper is a blank screen.

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Alden Ehrenreich keeps his phone blank these days, yet his best preparation once happened somewhere with even fewer notifications: a forest.

The retreat came the day before his 25th birthday, when Alden Ehrenreich spent hours alone in the woods preparing his big scene in Hail, Caesar! opposite Ralph Fiennes. He told Happy Sad Confused that it was the funniest writing he had ever read, which was exactly the problem. His goal was to make the scene matter so much that humor had no room to sneak in. It was an analog fix from an actor who prefers analog.

Trouble started at a Friday rehearsal, where Ehrenreich could not finish the scene without laughing. Director Joel Coen told him to relax because the editors could cut around it, but he refused. Filming took a day and a half, and he held a straight face until Fiennes broke during his final close-up. Ehrenreich needed trees, not a feed.

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