Lena Dunham says she quit Twitter following 'verbal abuse'

Speaking during an interview on the Re/code Decode podcast, released on Tuesday, the Girls creator admitted she had handed all control of her Twitter account to her management after a picture she posted of herself wearing her boyfriend's underwear attracted negative attention.

"I don't look at Twitter anymore. I tweet, but I do it through someone else," the 29-year-old said.

"I really appreciate that anybody follows me at all, and so I didn't want to cut off my relationship to it completely, but it really, truly wasn't a safe space for me."

Dunham, who told the program she didn't even know her account password any more, has 2.8 million followers on the social media site.

The move is another step in Dunham's gradual move away from Twitter.

Earlier this year, she told Ryan Seacrest on the Golden Globes red carpet that she had deleted the social media site's app from her phone to "create a safe space for [herself] emotionally".

"I check it occasionally, but it's not the same codependence Twitter and I once shared," Dunham said.

"There's a lot of people I love on Twitter, but unfortunately you can't read those without reading deranged neo-cons telling you you should be buried under a pile of rocks."

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter in June, Dunham compared reading Twitter mentions as a feminist celebrity to the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

"The way women are spoken to in social media is truly shocking," she said. "It's how you imagine people screaming at prisoners in Guantanamo."

Although she has quit Twitter, Dunham still personally uses her Instagram account which, interestingly, is where the picture which sparked the abuse was posted.

The picture, an image of Dunham in a crop top and her boyfriend's boxer shorts with a caption telling her followers she had a "rough week" and calling on them to "take the time and space [they] need", prompted a debate between commenters on her account about whether Dunham should be considered a child molester after she revealed in her memoir Not That Kind of Girl that, at age seven, she had placed pebbles inside her younger sister's vagina.

(Shortly after the book's release last year, Dunham spoke out against the characterisation of her as a child molester – via her Twitter account, no less – saying that interpretation of the passage was "upsetting and disgusting".)

Other comments were more closely targeted at Dunham's appearance, with another commenter remarking that they "threw up and shit their pants at the same time".

The decision for Dunham to hand over her Twitter account to her management is interesting given the extent to which her "no holds barred" social media use is part of her personal brand.

Dunham often uses her social media pages to post pictures of herself without make-up or clothing, as well as to openly document her mental health struggles.