‘Modern Family’ Star Ariel Winter Admits She Regrets Responding to Some Trolls

Modern Family star Ariel Winter frequently fires back at social media trolls who criticize her looks, but the 21-year-old star recently said she regrets some of her comebacks. Winter said she now feels that some of her responses were “unnecessary” and feels she might have been playing right into the hands of her trolls.

“I try to not respond. I wanted to respond positively to people for a long time because I do feel that if you are sitting and sending somebody that message, there must be something you’re not getting in your life… if you’re gonna sit on your computer and send somebody that,” Winter told Us Weekly in an interview published Sunday.

Winter said she has had moments where she regretted responding to the trolls.

“I’ve been like, ‘This is stupid. It’s unnecessary,’” Winter told the magazine. “I do know … I think as everybody knows, when somebody is posting that comment they want an argument, you know, they want you to respond.”

Winter has been playing Alex Dunphy, the middle child of the Dunphy family on ABC‘s Modern Family, for more than a decade. Her transformation as she has grown up from teenager to 21-year-old has caused body shamers and critics to come out of the woodwork over the years.

Once, she was accused of getting “obvious” plastic surgery, with one person claiming she had lip fillers, cheek bone and chin shaving and breast reductions.

“I wasn’t going to reply but I HAVE to ask…what the f— is cheek bone and chin shaving????” Winter fired back. “You’re also wrong about all of it but the way. One breast reductions and I lost weight but you do you boo.”

She was even criticized by fans after she shared a GoFundMe fundraiser for a cousin who was recently hospitalized. One fan asked her why she wasn’t paying her cousin’s medical bills herself.

“Thanks for your sh— response to my sick cousin,” Winter replied. “What makes you think I’m not? Love assumptions! [By the way] — if someone isn’t able to donate, then I absolutely wouldn’t want them to. His friend created the gofundme so I will of course share for my cousin like anyone else would.”

Winter will be playing Alex one last time in Modern Family Season 11, which debuts in September. She also recently signed on as a new spokeswoman for Ulta Beauty.

“I actually had a fan comment on one of my posts and said, ‘You respond more to negative comments than you do to positive,’” Winter told Us Weekly. “I didn’t even realize I was doing that.”

The star continued, “I think about the positive comments way more and it affects me way more … As a society we do comment more on the negative and that comment really hit me and so now I’m really trying to follow that of like, doing what I actually feel, which is to be thankful for the support and actually show that and kind of try and bury the negative.”

Modern Family Season 11 debuts on ABC on Wednesday, Sept. 25.