Go Ahead, Bieber, Quit Instagram

MarketWatch analyst Barbara Kollmeyer has some advice for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Call Justin Bieber and beg him not to leave Instagram.

Kollmeyer may or may not be a “Bieleber,” but her advice is a bit more complicated than just wanting more selfies of the Canadian criminal — er, pop sensation.

Bieber was Instagram’s seventh most-popular user, with nearly 78 million followers.

It seems Bieber was a little upset over criticism of photos he took with new girlfriend Sofia Richie (Lionel Richie’s daughter): “I’m gonna make my Instagram private if you guys don’t stop the hate,” he warned.

If you felt a terrifying seismic shift in the Earth’s crust last week — it wasn’t the tragedy in Italy. It was because Bieber apparently made good on his threat, leaving a blank page where his account had been, and leaving his fans no way to keep track of him other than picking over the meager crumbs at justinbiebermusic.com — and his remaining accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat.

Kollmeyer doesn’t want Zuckerberg to offer to take Gomez to the prom or anything like that. She’s concerned that Facebook, which owns Instagram, might suffer the sort of stock dive most companies face after, say, car recalls for fatal engine explosions.

And it’s not as silly as it might sound: Bieber was Instagram’s seventh most-popular user, with nearly 78 million followers.

Facebook’s stockholders don’t need to share Kollmeyer’s fears, though: Facebook stock has risen 2.26 percent in the last month, showing no unusual activity over the past week at all.

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Celebrities jump and in out of the various social media channels as often as they do rehab or one another’s beds: Fifth Harmony’s Normani Kordei left Twitter earlier this month, blaming racist comments; Demi Lovato dropped Instagram and Twitter in June, saying she was tired of fan criticism — she stayed with Snapchat, saying she enjoyed its lack of user comments — but was back on all three less than a day later.

Iggy Azalea left Instagram last year, complaining about abusive comments, but her account was immediately taken over by her management; Zayn Malik briefly left Twitter in 2012 for the same reason. Emma Stone dumped her Twitter account in 2013 after it got hacked; Miley Cyrus quit Twitter in 2009, but returned in 2011.

And actor/musician Ed Sheeran foreswore all social media — including email and a cellphone — in December 2015, saying he was tired of “seeing the world through a screen,” and maybe he’d be back sometime after his third album is released. (No word on when that’s due.)

Related: Can Celebrities Quit Social Media?

Just how seriously should we take all this? Not very, according to The Huffington Post, which poked fun at Zayn Malik’s Twitter departure: “Let’s all take a moment to remember Zayn: Remember that time he said good morning? Or that time he tweeted to ask how all the Directioners were? Or even better, the time when he posted a winky face? R.I.P @zaynmalik, you will be missed.”

On the other hand, there’s no denying that social media can get very ugly. Actress Leslie Jones, for instance, left Twitter on a tidal wave of misogynist, racist comments about her role in “Ghostbusters” earlier this year, prompting public support from fans and other celebrities, all of whom loudly denounced the abuse she’d suffered.

As for the Bieber/Richie/Gomez triangle, Bieber’s noisy, irate fans have not, so far, exited Instagram en masse. Even if Instagram was forced to take sides — which seems unlikely in the extreme — Gomez has 92 million followers against Bieber’s 78 million.

And there are already breathless rumors hinting Bieber may soon deign to grace Instagram with his presence again — perhaps indicating regret on Bieber’s part, or more likely calmer heads prevailing among the adult or two he must have somewhere on his staff.

“Yo, Biebs,” we can hear them saying, “you got 78 million people following you on Instagram. You can talk to them all day, every day. For free. You wanna shut all that down over some diss? Wake up, man — you need Instagram a lot more than they need you.”