A.J. Brown isn’t a selfish diva. He’s trying to handle social media and mind his mental health.

A.J. Brown has been at the center of a pretty strange controversy over the last six days — strange if you don’t know anything about him, strange if you’re not someone who lives on the Internet. In fact, if you don’t spend several hours a day on Twitter/X or other social media, you might not know that A.J. Brown was at the center of a controversy at all. But he has been, and the topic is worth explaining and exploring, because it says as much about the modern media environment, about a significant segment of our culture and society, as it does about A.J. Brown.

After the Eagles’ 33-25 victory on Christmas over the Giants, Brown declined to comment to a group of reporters who approached him at his locker. “I got nothing nice to say,” he said. He then did not speak to the media on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, which allowed speculation and conjecture, about his state of mind and the reasons for his silence, to flourish. Was he angry that Jalen Hurts hadn’t thrown the ball to him more often? Was he frustrated about the performance of the Eagles’ offense? Did he and coach Nick Sirianni have some kind of conflict? Was he fulfilling the negative stereotype of an NFL wide receiver — self-centered and diva-like?

Those questions became more than just questions on Brown’s social media feeds. They became assertions and insults, and Brown has a tendency to spend a little too much time on those feeds and struggles to handle the criticism he gets there. His only response has been a post on Twitter/X: a 71-second monologue by Kevin Durant in which Durant lamented the disparagement and what he regarded as unfair coverage throughout his career.

Does that post mean that Brown has a beef with the reporters who cover the Eagles? Does it make him soft or weak or selfish? It does not. It does not make him the kind of distraction and disruption that, say, Terrell Owens was. Poll the Eagles’ coaches and players, and they’ll tell you without exception that Brown is a terrific teammate, that his frustration this season has been born of the team’s stumbles and failures and not of his individual interests.

No, it makes him a sensitive person who, in 2021, acknowledged publicly that he has had suicidal thoughts and dealt with depression. It makes him a professional athlete who — like Lane Johnson, like Brandon Brooks, like too many others to count — is grappling with mental health issues. It makes it important to understand why A.J. Brown — not another wide receiver, not another Eagles player, not anyone else but A.J. Brown — might act the way he does and has.

“Everything is about growth and learning how to deal with different things,” said Eagles safety Kevin Byard, who was also Brown’s teammate for three years with the Tennessee Titans. “It’s a fine line with us being athletes. This is a very emotional sport. You want guys to play on that edge, to have a lot of emotion during the game. At the same time, you want guys to be able to control that emotion. So there’s always a delicate balance.

“For a guy like A.J., who’s very emotional, who cares a lot about his teammates, who cares a lot about the game, sometimes it gets misconstrued as being immature. He deals with fans and criticism differently than somebody else.”

A.J. Brown is 26. It is easy to say that he is a grown-up, a man, responsible for all of his actions and reactions, for what he says online or on a sideline or in a postgame locker room. It is also easy to forget how young 26 is. It is easy to forget that a 26-year-old man, any 26-year-old man, has never known a day of his life without the Internet — without the freedom that it affords, without the risk that it poses. It is easy to forget that a 26-year-old man, any 26-year-old man, has never known a moment of his adult life without social media, without Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. It’s easy to suggest that the negative feedback a 26-year-old man receives on these media is inconsequential. It is easy to forget that all that negative feedback can still be overwhelming.

» READ MORE: A.J. Brown admits he made a mistake with his recent social media posts: ‘Put the blame on me’

And it is easy to forget that this particular 26-year-old man — who is a famous football player and who, after the Eagles traded for him, signed a contract extension worth as much as $100 million — has 621,000 followers on Instagram and another 259,000 followers on Twitter. That’s more than three quarters of a million people who are waiting to see whatever he has done or hear whatever he has to say about anything at any time. Who might love everything he does and says. Who might love it so much that they show their affection in a way that makes him uncomfortable or even fearful for his safety. Who might criticize him for a dropped pass or a sideline argument. Who might draw inaccurate conclusions about him based on a snippet of video footage or a quote without context. Who might aim an offensive or vulgar post at Brown and go ahead and fire it off, because what does it cost them? They will never have to be face to face with him. They will never have to look him in the eye and repeat whatever terrible words they might have posted, and they never would.

“Knowing the position that we’re in, you’re not going to ever win a battle on social media with a fan, no matter what it is,” Byard said. “At the end of the day, somebody’s going to come back at you, saying you’re immature or you don’t handle your emotions. My thing is, you may see it and think, ‘This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ But don’t get Twitter-finger-happy.

“Let’s say, for example, you don’t have the greatest game. You get on social media, and everybody’s clowning you, saying you suck. And then you go to the grocery store the next day, and people are nice, like, ‘I’m a big fan.’ The energy on social media isn’t the same as it is in person.”

No, it’s not. Byard said that he has never advised Brown to stay off social media because “I would never tell a guy what to do.” It might be the best thing for him, though. Maybe what A.J. Brown needs, for his own sake, is to turn off his smartphone, put all his apps aside for a while, and trust that the treatment he receives from someone in the same room with him is the kind that counts most.