Selena Gomez was bullied during her time at the Disney Channel

She said: "I think he understood that I knew what it meant to be bullied. I went to the biggest high school in the world, which is the Disney Channel. And my mom had a lot of history dealing with [bullying]. I heard her stories growing up. She’s very open about it."

Whilst her mother Mandy added: "When I was growing up, I was always bullied because I was the outsider, the weird girl with the purple hair and combat boots. Then I was a teen mom. You get really judged. I had counsellors telling me how I’d ruined my life, [Selena’s] life and how I ruined the father’s life, even though he participated."

And the 24-year-old actress and singer admits social media has changed a lot since she first became famous and confesses to deleting Instagram from her phone "at least once a week" as she hates the negative comments posted on the photo sharing app.

In a joint interview with her mother Mandy for the New York Times newspaper, she added: "When I was on 'Wizards of Waverly Place', we didn’t have social media really. Twitter had just begun. Every Friday, I’d get to do a live taping in front of all these little kids and make their life. That’s when I was the happiest. Then, as I got older, I watched it go from zero to a hundred. So I’m actually glad it took us this long to create this project because it’s so relevant now ...

"You can’t avoid [reading the comments] sometimes. I delete the app from my phone at least once a week. You fixate on the [negative] ones. They’re not like, 'You’re ugly.' It’s like they want to cut to your soul. Imagine all the insecurities that you already feel about yourself and having someone write a paragraph pointing out every little thing - even if it’s just physical."