Jennifer Aniston Was an Instagram Stalker Before Joining

Jennifer Aniston finally joined Instagram this week, conveniently just before her Apple+ show The Morning Show debuts. However, Aniston told Jimmy Kimmel she had used the social network before, just to stalk people and check out how the site worked. Aniston set a record for the fastest Instagram user to reach 1 million followers.

On Wednesday, the former Friends star revealed she had an account, but never posted anything. Instead, she was just curious to see how Instagram worked.

"Well, it was a stalker account, yes," she said on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. "When I was thinking about doing this, I sort of figured it was time to kind of understand the world and dip my toe into the sort of social media pool."

Aniston joined Instagram on Tuesday, sharing a selfie with her former Friends co-stars, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow. "And now we're Instagram FRIENDS too. HI INSTAGRAM," she wrote.

After appearing on Kimmel, she shared a scene from The Morning Show, adding, "I swear I didn't mean to break it... Thank you guys for the kind, glitchy welcome."

Then on Thursday, she shared her first-ever Throwback Thursday post, sharing an old photo of herself as a child, compared to a selfie taken today. One hour after being published, the post has more than 2.46 million likes.

As of this writing, Aniston is up to 12.6 million followers. The Guinness Book of World Records reported Aniston took just five hours and 16 minutes to hit 1 million subscribers, breaking the previous record set by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The royal couple moved at a snail's pace to hit the mark, reaching 1 million followers in five hours and 45 minutes.

In an interview with Variety, Aniston said she did not know if there should be an age limit on social media, but she has seen the impact it has on her friends' children.

"Do you know that mental health has gone through the roof? And primarily what they've discovered, it's because of social media," Aniston said. "It's compare and despair, over and over again. Do they like me? Do they not like me? Am I good enough? It's hard enough as it is being a kid without the damn 'likes' or 'not likes.' I wish they would remove the 'like.' Why do they need them? Why do we need a comments section, where these trolls with no lives try to be hurtful?"

Aniston is returning to television when The Morning Show debuts on Apple+ on Nov. 1. The series stars Aniston as Alex Levy, who tries to keep her job after her partner, Steve Carell's Mitch Kessler is fired for sexual misconduct. Reese Witherspoon co-stars as Alex's rival, Bradley Jackson. Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bel Powley and Jack Davenport also star in the series, written by Friday Night Lights' Kerry Ehrin.

Photo credit: ABC/Randy Holmes