Virat Kohli has addressed his reduced presence on social media and lack of tournament win celebrations on digital mediums. Kohli has been accused of using his social media accounts just for commercial purposes.
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Virat Kohli has recently faced frequent criticism on social media for using his reach primarily for brand promotions rather than joining his teammates in celebrating the Indian cricket team’s victories. Kohli remains the most popular Indian cricketer on social media, boasting 271 million followers on Instagram and 66 million on X.
However, his recent posts have almost always been about promoting the brands he is associated with. Fans have shared different opinions on Kohli’s recent social media activities, with few accusing him of only caring for money or being not interested in celebrating India’s recent wins,
including the Champions Trophy 2025 title victory.
Kohli, speaking at the
RCB Innovation Lab’s Indian Sports Summit, recently opened up on the topic and disclosed that he feels being active on social media requires a lot of energy and he wants to spend that on his game and family.
“The kind of attention you get and the kind of traction you receive when you put something out there on a platform is quite unbelievable to be honest. It’s quite intense. Luckily I was born in a time where I didn’t work with this thing [my phone] in my pocket,” Kohli said.
“So for me to just keep it on the side is pretty easy. Hence I don’t engage in posts a lot these days. A lot of people are not happy about that but that’s something that I’ve consciously tried to do.
“Because as I said, to keep up with that stream was just way too much. I just physically felt like it was taking a lot of my energy away from me which I would absolutely apply to my game, to my life, people around me. And I didn’t want to waste any of that.”
Kohli also admitted that most of his recent social media posts are a result of the agreements that he entered into the past and is now making an effort to keep his social media channels separate from his business commitments.
“A lot of the things that I still have to do on social media are the things that I’ve kind of agreed to in the past,” he said.
“But if you ask me today, I’m making a conscious effort not to include my social media handle which is private to me. In terms of whatever I’m doing next in my life, I’m kind of disconnecting the two. And I wanted to be able to do that because what happens is if you only see branded content on your platform, then people are like, oh, there’s nothing being posted apart from this here. And it just becomes too complicated.”
Kohli also clarified why he doesn’t celebrate wins on social media anymore. He said: “So I didn’t want anything to do with it. And yeah, for me, posting about, for example, us winning the championship, it’s not going to increase the happiness in my heart. They all know we’ve won the trophy. So me posting about it is not going to give us two trophies. The reality stays the same.”