Bette Midler is dismayed that social media has the power to "destroy lives".
The 74-year-old actress has 1.9 million followers on Twitter and is a regular poster but she is stunned on a daily basis at the hurtful comments that users are allowed to tweet and she is relieved that the technology wasn’t around when she was a teenager.
Speaking to Radio Times magazine, she said: "I don’t think I could cope. Life is too complicated now, it’s too hard. When I was growing up, we had the best of it. My generation had peace, contentment, civility; we don’t have those things today. People are allowed to say the worst things they can think of [on social media], which can injure people to the core of their being. It destroys lives, which is just not fair."
Bette – who is married to artist Martin von Haselberg, with whom she has 33-year-old daughter Sophie von Haselberg – is not a fan of much modern technology.
The ‘Hocus Pocus’ star admits she struggles to even watch television these days because of all the different streaming services and channels.
Bette also struggles to hear the lines on the shows she does watch and she and Martin often have to put subtitles on.
She said: "I miss the simplicity of the past. In the old days, you had one remote control, you pressed a button, and watched whatever you wanted. "Now, there are 15 remotes and it’s a trial to get the TV on and the sound working. You need a teenager or a live-in TV wrangler.
"There’s a lot of, ‘What did he say?’ And, ‘Put the captioning on.’ The TV is new, we’re old. That’s the problem."