Quick Facts
In full:
Justin Drew Bieber
Born:
March 1, 1994, London, Ontario, Canada (age 31)
Notable Family Members:
son of Jeremy Bieber
son of Pattie Mallette
married to Hailey Bieber (2018–present)
Movies/Tv Shows (Acted In):
"Killing Hasselhoff" (2017)
"The Simpsons" (2013)
"Dave" (2020)
"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (2010–2011)
"True Jackson, VP" (2009)
"Zoolander 2" (2016)
"Cubed" (2010)
Albums:
"Changes" (2020)
"Purpose" (2015)
"Under the Mistletoe" (2011)
"My World" (2009)
"Believe" (2012)
"My Worlds Acoustic" (2010)
"My World 2.0" (2010)
"Believe Acoustic" (2013)

Justin Bieber (born March 1, 1994, London, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian singer and former teen idol whose fresh-faced good looks and appealing pop songs sparked a global craze beginning in 2009.

Early life and discovery by Scooter Braun and Usher

Bieber was raised by a single mother in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, and as a child he learned to play the drums, the piano, the guitar, and the trumpet. In 2007 he participated in a local singing competition, placing second, and his mother posted a video of his performance on the Web site YouTube for friends and family who were unable to attend. She later uploaded other homemade videos, in which Bieber sang popular rhythm-and-blues (R&B) songs and occasionally accompanied himself on acoustic guitar, and they soon attracted attention beyond their originally intended audience.

Among those who saw Bieber’s videos was Scott (“Scooter”) Braun, a music promoter and talent agent, who invited the 13-year-old Bieber to record demos at a studio in Atlanta. While there, Bieber happened to encounter R&B singer Usher and arranged an informal audition with him. Impressed by Bieber’s natural confidence and vocal talent, Usher helped sign him to a recording contract in late 2008.

Stick figure illustrations holding hands with the Canadian flag.
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“One Time,” My World 2.0, and “Baby”

In May 2009 Bieber unveiled his first single, the buoyant puppy-love song “One Time,” and six months later he released the seven-track EP My World, composed mainly of glossy R&B-influenced pop. By this time his audience had dramatically expanded to include countless preadolescent girls who considered him a heartthrob, and the recording sold more than one million copies.

He replicated the feat with the full-length album My World 2.0 (2010), which debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart. Its lead single, the yearningly heartfelt “Baby”—featuring a guest appearance from rapper Ludacris—reached the top five of Billboard’s singles chart, and several other tracks landed in the Top 40. The official video for “Baby” also became the first to amass more than 500 million views on YouTube. My World 2.0 received a Grammy Award nomination for best pop vocal album, and Bieber was nominated for best new artist. The singer’s enormous popularity was boosted by his allegiance to social media such as Twitter (now X) and his frequent television appearances.

Other “teen idol” projects and Believe

Later in 2010 Bieber released the album My Worlds Acoustic, featuring stripped-down versions of his songs, and published an autobiographical book, Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever: My Story. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, a documentary film interspersed with 3-D concert footage, opened the following year. Bieber maintained his visibility with the albums Never Say Never: The Remixes (2011), a companion to the film, and the Christmas-themed Under the Mistletoe (2011), both of which hit number one in the United States and Canada. On the similarly successful Believe (2012) and Believe Acoustic (2013), Bieber introduced a more mature sound, with the hit single “Boyfriend” recalling the suave R&B of Justin Timberlake.

Purpose and Grammy-winning collaborations

As Bieber entered adulthood, his celebrity often overshadowed his music. His romantic relationships (with Selena Gomez, among others) and his occasional skirmishes with the law brought him considerable tabloid attention. His 2015 album Purpose found an audience beyond his youthful fan base, with each of its first three singles reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Also in 2015, Bieber contributed vocals to Jack Ü’s Grammy Award-winning electro-pop hit “Where Are Ü Now.” Collaborations with other musicians followed, resulting in several popular songs and another Grammy win, for “10,000 Hours” (2019), a country-pop single recorded with Dan + Shay.

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Marriage to Hailey Baldwin, Changes, and Justice

In 2018 Bieber married model Hailey Baldwin (daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin), and their relationship inspired Changes (2020). They had their first child, Jack Blues, in August 2024. Bieber’s sixth studio album, Justice, was released in 2021 and garnered eight Grammy nominations, including song of the year and record of the year for the chart-topping single “Peaches.” Bieber had another global smash hit in 2021 with “Stay,” a collaboration with Australian rapper The Kid LAROI.

John M. Cunningham The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

social media, a form of mass media communications on the Internet (such as on websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos). Social networking and social media are overlapping concepts, but social networking is usually understood as users building communities among themselves while social media is more about using social networking sites and related platforms to build an audience.

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Explore the ProCon debate

The earliest forms of social media appeared almost as soon as technology could support them. E-mail and chat programs debuted in the early 1970s, but persistent communities did not surface until the creation of the discussion group network USENET in 1979. USENET allowed users to post and receive messages within subject areas called newsgroups. USENET and other discussion forums, such as privately hosted bulletin board systems (BBSs), enabled individuals to interact, but each was essentially a closed system. With the release in 1993 of the Mosaic web browser, those systems were joined with an easy-to-use graphical interface. The architecture of the World Wide Web made it possible to navigate from one site to another with a click, and faster Internet connections allowed for more multimedia content than could be found in the text-heavy newsgroups.

The first companies to create social networks based on web technology were Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com. Classmates.com, founded in 1995, used an aggressive pop-up advertising campaign to draw web surfers to its site. It based its social network on the existing connection between members of high-school and college graduating classes, armed service branches, and workplaces. SixDegrees.com was the first true social networking site. It was launched in 1997 with most of the features that would come to characterize such sites: members could create profiles for themselves, maintain lists of friends, and contact one another through the site’s private messaging system. SixDegrees.com claimed to have attracted more than three million users by 2000, but it failed to translate those numbers into revenue and collapsed with countless other dot-coms when the “bubble” burst that year for shares of e-commerce companies.

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media convergence: Social media

Nevertheless, social media sites became popular in the early 21st century. Social networks such as Friendster and MySpace emerged that allowed family members, friends, and acquaintances to connect online. Those two sites were eventually supplanted by Facebook, which became one of the world’s most popular social media sites with billions of users worldwide. Other forms of social media emerged for the sharing of specific types of content. For example, YouTube allows users to share videos, and TikTok is specifically designed for the sharing of short videos. LinkedIn emphasizes a user’s professional connections, where users create pages similar in structure to résumés.

Concerns over the possible negative effects of social media are also growing in tandem with the burgeoning technology. For example, some observers suggest that social media sites spur greater schadenfreude—the emotional experience of pleasure in response to another’s misfortune—perhaps as a result of the dehumanization that occurs when interacting through screens on computers and mobile devices. Some studies also suggest a strong tie between heavy social media use and increased depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicidal tendencies, and feelings of inadequacy. During his second tenure as U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy raised concerns about social media’s impact on children and in 2024 he suggested mandated warning labels on social media sites.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Charles Preston.