Ed Sheeran Says 'Turbulent Things' in His Personal Life Spurred Recent Instagram Break

Ed Sheeran is back on Instagram with a whole new outlook.

After taking a two-month break from the platform, the singer returned to his grid on Tuesday, opening up in a video about his hesitancy to use social media in the past.

"I realize I haven't been that engaged in my social media or my fan base online over the last couple of years," said Sheeran, joking that the things he had posted were oftentimes weird or funny.

Sheeran, 31, commonly takes a long break from Instagram towards the end of each year. But he explained that his latest exit was part of a bigger issue.

"The reason I'm making this video is, just being totally honest, I've had some turbulent things going on in my personal life so I just didn't really feel like being online and pretending to be something I'm not, when I wasn't feeling like that," he said. "And I know that sounds weird."

Now though, he said "things are looking up" and he's "back online."

"Weird s--- is gonna start being posted," he joked.

While Sheeran didn't get into specifics about the turbulence he's experienced, he's certainly had a full plate in both his personal and professional life.

In May 2022, he announced that he and wife Cherry Seaborn had welcomed a second daughter.

"Want to let you all know we've had another beautiful baby girl. We are both so in love with her, and over the moon to be a family of 4 x," the musician wrote on Instagram alongside a sweet photo of a pair of white baby socks on top of a brown blanket.

Their first, Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran, was born in 2020.

The "Shape of You" singer has been open about how becoming a father has changed his perspective on life generally, but particularly on his career.

He took a year off following a two-year run for the ÷ tour. And when Seaborn gave birth to Lyra during that year, he considered stepping away from music altogether.

"Music is entirely me as a person," he said during a SiriusXM interview in 2021. "And then I had my daughter — well, my wife had our daughter, but I'm a parent. And then I was like, 'That's it, this is me, I'm just going to be a dad, I'm not going to play music anymore.'"

The "Bad Habits" hitmaker shared that there was "a long period of time" where everything felt "directionless."

"Not that success should be measured in album sales or ticket sales, because I do feel like most of my success in my mind has been measured by songs being good that I've written, but just there's an expectation from everyone around you," he said.

The pressure can be all-encompassing. "[There are] people in my family that are like, 'The next album has to be even bigger,' " Sheeran said. "And I know they're saying it to be supportive, but maybe it shouldn't be, maybe it should just be an album and like maybe a career can kind of go like this [makes wave motion] rather than always up."

Instead of turning his back on music, he decided to channel his creativity for his daughter's sake. "I suddenly was like, 'I think it's more important for my daughter to grow up knowing that her parents have the work ethic and her parents love working hard and love creating and enjoy their jobs and seeing that rather than, like, looking at your dad as technically unemployed.' "

This spring, Sheeran — whose ÷ tour broke records as the highest-grossing tour of all time — is hitting the road again, this time returning to North America for the first time in nearly five years.

The Mathematics Tour, which began in Dublin, Ireland in April 2022 before finishing the European leg in September 2022, will stretch from May to September 2023 as Sheeran takes the stage at stadiums across the U.S. and Canada.

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Khalid, Russ, Dylan, Cat Burns, Maisie Peters and Rosa Linn are among the opening acts that will support Sheeran throughout the North American leg of the tour.

"I'm ready for you North America," he wrote alongside a hilarious video where he underwent a high-pressure workout to get himself into "North American tour shape," which included swapping out a soccer ball for an American football.