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Steven Spielberg has sworn off social media, saying it creates too much missing time

Spielberg likens social media time loss to alien abductions

Steven Spielberg on the set of The Fablemans — Image credit: Amblin Entertainment

News by Joshua Lapin-Bertone, Contributing writer

Published on Tue May 05 2026

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You’ll find lots of filmmakers on social media, but Steven Spielberg isn’t one of them. The Jaws and Jurassic Park director tried to make his own social media profile but found that it wasn’t for him. So, if you find a Steven Spielberg profile on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, just know that it’s a fake.

“I’m not on any of these things by the way,” Steven Spielberg revealed during an interview with The Big Picture’s Sean Fennessey. “Not that I have any kind of a personal thing to it, it’s just that it eats up the clock. I put Instagram on my phone for two weeks, and I had missing time as if I had been abducted by aliens. I mean, I was going through that missing time dilemma. Where did that time go?”

The data backs up what Spielberg says. Studies have shown that the average social media user loses close to 20 hours per week, and that doesn’t even take into account what it does to your mental health. Spielberg’s next film Disclosure Day hits theaters on June 12, but if he had spent the last few years on social media, would the movie even be ready to go?

Then again, we'd be remiss if we didn't wonder if that "I had missing time as if I had been abducted by aliens" line wasn't a Disclosure Day plug of some sort, considering that last trailer... but surely not. Right? Right.

At the end of the day, you don’t have to go cold turkey like Spielberg. Just use social media responsibly.

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Joshua Lapin-Bertone: Joshua is a pop culture writer specializing in comic book media. His work has appeared on the official DC Comics website, the DC Universe subscription service, HBO Max promotional videos, the Batman Universe fansite, and more. In between traveling around the country to cover various comic conventions, Joshua resides in Florida where he binges superhero television and reads obscure comics from yesteryear.