Jack Black joined Instagram to compete with Jumanji co-stars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart

Jack Black has been a bona fide film and rock star for more than two decades. Known for his over-the-top physical humor, wit and surprisingly substantive acting and musical talents, there was one frontier Black never was able to figure out—social media.

“I do feel like an old man sometimes with the new technologies,” Black tells me.

Kevin Hart agrees with that assessment.

“It’s weird because Jack is the guy that acts as if he’s the old ancient guy, “ Hart tells me separately. “He’s like, what? What is that? Snap-what? Insta-what? Face-what? He’s that guy.”

The same cannot be said for Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Hart, Black’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle co-stars. The two have a combined 152.8 million followers on Instagram alone, making theirs the 9th and 25th most followed accounts on the entire platform.

When the three met on set, Black quickly felt a bit of envy, he admits to me.

"On this film, I started doing Instagram just because I was checking out Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson and Kevin Hart’s style.”

"They go hard on the Instagram,” I say.

“They go hard and they’re really good at it, man. They have these massive followings. I started feeling jealous of their internet sauce. I was like, I can do that too, I just chose not to until now!” says Black.

“Kevin is just a ball of fire energy,” says Black. “It’s kind of awesome to be in a movie with him, although I did feel some pressure to be funnier a little more often. It was like, ‘Damn, I’ve got to pump my game up.’”

“Did you give Jack any tips?” I ask Hart and Johnson.

“I told him just do the complete opposite of what DJ does if you want to be successful at social media, Hart says. “He does it all wrong. When he heard that he went…”

“He went, ‘oh!’” Johnson adds.

“He said, ‘got it!’ And he took off right in front of us!” Hart jokes. “When we explained some things to him he had a new-found love for it. He’s very active on social media now. It’s good.”

“It’s crazy because, with a guy like Jack Black, he’s not one of those actors who insulate themselves, and are introverted,” Johnson adds. “Jack, as you know, as you talked to Jack, he’s very outgoing, and expressive. He’s extremely entertaining,”

“The fact that he hasn’t been active on social media until he started shooting on us on Jumanji is just mind boggling to us. But since he’s come on and he’s embraced it, he’s done great. He’s got a big following,” says Johnson.

“I kind of like the new challenges and the new things,” says Black. “Now I approach it like my own little TV show. It’s started to take over my whole existence. Now that’s more important—” He pauses, his eyes getting wide. “—than anything.”