Checking and scrolling through our various social media accounts has become as much a daily ritual as snoozing Alexa. Have to pee? That can wait because you’ve got to see how many people liked your furbaby pic on Facebook. Have to brush your teeth? That can wait because you must know what people think of the same car selfie you posted on Instagram for the umpteenth time. And have to get dressed? Well, nobody really does that anymore since the pandemic anyway so no worries there.
Psychologists estimate that as many as 5 to 10 percent of Americans meet the criteria for social media addiction today. Social media addiction is defined as being a behavioral addiction of being overly concerned about social media, driven by an insatiable urge to log on to or use social media, and wasting so much time and effort on social media that it impairs other important life areas.
Those of us who work in the digital space have to learn how to separate our actual a-hole selves from our online a-hole selves. However, not many people have the ability to strike such a balance. It would be nice to go back to the simpler days of Myspace and lose friendships over stupid shit like who you put in your top eight, but that’s not our current reality.
In the interest of properly diagnosing and detoxing from social media, we’ve laid out the signs you’re experiencing social media burnout — and will tell you what to do about it.
Cover Photo: Rachata Teyparsit / EyeEm (Getty Images)
social media burnout
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1. You Abruptly Wake Up to Scream at a Troll
A great social media code to live by is to never feed a troll. However, sometimes the troll is such an unbearably horrific hemorrhoid that you're forced to get into a political or cultural shouting match with them. That said, you may find yourself waking up and angrily shouting "OK, Boomer!"
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2. You Swipe Left on an Actual Person's Face
With the advent of online dating apps has come the almost blasé act of scrolling through Tinder and either swiping left or right over potential matches. Honestly, it's such an unbelievably superficial and terrible thing but something we all do. So once social media burnout kicks in, you may find yourself walking up to random people and swiping left over their actual face if you find them unpalatable.
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3. You Speak in Only in 280 Characters
For people on Twitter, you already know that each and every tweet must not exceed 280 characters. It was originally only 140 characters, but that changed a few years ago. Anyway, your Twitter burnout might be so severe that you will only converse with people IRL in 280 characters.
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4. You Hum Popular TikTok Sounds
One of the great (or unbearably annoying) features of TikTok are all the built-in sounds and tracks one can use in their content. Some of these sounds are pretty excellent while some are a cacophony of cancer. For the real bangers, you may find yourself humming them as you walk down the street.
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5. You Figure Out What Instagram Filter Somebody Should Be
There's nothing more frightening than opening up a social media app that abruptly activates your front-facing camera, showing you looking like a derpy, unfiltered mess. So that's why Instagram users exhaust a lot of time trying to find just the right filter to make them look way better than they actually are. There's the obligatory Clarendon filter for the hipster d-bags taking photos of rusted-out shipwrecks on the East River, and then there's the obligatory TanVille filter the bikini girls perpetually use to look more orange. This might result in you looking at gross people in real life and figuring out what filter would work best for them.
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6. You Start Telling People They're Blocked...To Their Face
There's no greater joy (and necessary feature) to social media than blocking someone, especially if they're a faceless troll who thinks a horribly misspelled conspiracy theory is somehow useful to anyone with a functioning brain cell. If this becomes such a problem for you, then you might want to log out for a day and do some sort of outdoor activity. Cuddling your dog or cat is also an excellent alternative.
