When It’s All Too Much! When We’re Exhausted By Social Media | Valerie Morris, Denver Content Marketing Strategist
Are you worn out by social media? Is it just all too much sometimes? Don’t worry! You’re not the only one to feel that way. In fact, social fatigue is growing more and more common in our culture. Introverts feel social fatigue when they’ve been around other people too much. However, I believe ANYONE can feel social fatigue in today’s culture because we are all constantly connected, even when we’re alone. Not only are we connected, but our phone is constantly buzzing at us to drive our attention back to oftentimes, pointless notifications.
Sherri Turkle of MIT, talks about how always being connected to our smart phones and social media makes us hyper-vigilant and always on “high-alert,” which can be okay for a time, but doesn’t allow us the mental space to process through things and conversations like we need. (See the full video here.)
So, how do we fight social fatigue when we’ve decided we have too much social media in our lives? We can’t always avoid it, and often social media can be a truly positive thing in our lives.
5 Rules To Fighting Social Fatigue
- Turn off notifications. It’s a simple thing to do, but simply turning off the notifications for your various apps will allow you to choose when you see them, rather than having your phone buzzing at you constantly.
- Manage your feeds. Utilize Facebook and Twitter lists to customize your news feeds on these platforms. This will allow you to have more control over what you see and what you don’t see at first glance.
- Unfollow people. I know it seems mean, but if a person consistently posts comments or posts that annoy you, simply unfollow them on Facebook and LinkedIn. Your news feeds will start to show more of what you enjoy seeing and less of what you don’t want to see. And don’t worry…they won’t be notified that you did so!
- Set rules for yourself on when you use social media. Give yourself boundaries of when you will surf Facebook or go on Twitter. Limit it to twice a day…you’ll be surprised at how much life happens around you when you do!
- Unplug on occasion. It’s okay for people to not reach you 24/7 and that may mean physically turning your phone off, or leaving it in one part of your home.
Go give it a rest! You can’t always avoid social media, but you can control how much of a role you want to give it in your life and how much you let it exhaust you!