Selena Gomez crowned queen of Instagram for 2016

The top-five most popular accounts on Instagram this year belong to female celebrities.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent

Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.

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Katie Collins

Dec. 2, 2016 5:09 a.m. PT

Selena rules Instagram, even though she didn't post for three months.
Jeff Kravitz/AMA2016, FilmMagic

Selena Gomez has nabbed the title of most popular celebrity on Instagram, for the second year in a row.

The star accounted for eight of the top 10 most-liked celebrity photos in 2016 and has more than 103 million followers. Only Instagram itself has more. Gomez's most-liked photo this year was a Coca-Cola ad, with 5.9 million likes.

Selena Gomez is one of several under-40 female entertainers who dominate Instagram, the Facebook-owned social network said Thursday.

She is joined at the top by pal Taylor Swift, as well as Ariana Grande, Beyonce and Kim Kardashian. The most popular male on Instagram is Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, who takes the No. 6 spot.

It's especially impressive that Gomez managed to achieve the top spot this year given that she didn't post at all for over three months this fall, taking a hiatus during treatment for a series of medical problems.

The singer also got into a spat with ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber on the social network this year, which culminated in him quitting Instagram altogether in August. "Instagram is for the devil. I think hell is Instagram," Bieber said this week.