Is It Just Me Or… Does Anyone Else feel the Pressure to Keep Up with EVERYTHING on Social Media?
Recently I’ve been reminiscing about the Good Old Days of social media. Which – for me – were the days when only a limited amount of content existed on each platform. It felt entirely possible to keep up with what you cared about, who you cared about, and generally, you could have a conversation with someone in real life who had probably also seen the things that you had seen on the internet! Ah, yesteryear.
Fast forward and here we are: even someone who dedicated every waking moment of their life to the scroll couldn’t get through it all. There’s more content, more creators, more campaigns, more news, more hashtags, more drama, more filters, more causes and more opinions than there ever has been. And even though on a rational level it makes no sense to believe that we can or even should keep up with all of it, try making my emotional brain believe that when I’m 5 hours deep in the timeline and I still feel like I’m out of the loop.
There was even a time last year when I wasn’t okay unless I’d hit the “you’ve seen every post from the last 3 days” notification. And that’s when you know it’s time to go outside.
Why do we feel this way? Why do we believe it’s necessary to keep up with absolutely everything, even if it’s to the detriment of our well-being? Around 200 years ago most regular folk didn’t even read the newspaper or comprehend what was going on outside of their small community. Now we’re bombarded with information from every corner of the world every minute of every day and honestly? I don’t think our brains can keep up. I know mine can’t.
One part of the pressure is probably that classic sense of FOMO. Things are going on; we want to be part of it. We need to know what’s happening online because what if we miss something desperately important or entertaining or life changing??? What if we don’t see what everyone else has seen and then we don’t understand that joke about a croissant when we get coffee with a friend?? Nobody likes being left behind.
For me, there’s definitely another layer going on as well, and if your social media is largely filled with social justice and activism-based content it might be there for you, too. The feeling that if you don’t keep up with every cause, tragedy, new piece of terminology or latest wave of outrage, you might be accused of just not caring.
There is a genuine sense of community surveillance in these kinds of online spaces that leads people to believe that if someone doesn’t repost the right infographics, engage with the right content, and speak on whatever the most current issue is, it’s perfectly okay to make assumptions about their character, tell them you’re disappointed and maybe even call them out for their silence and what you’ve perceived that silence to mean. In this way, the feeling of needing to keep up with everything that happens online is also based in needing to feel safe from potential backlash, and wanting to protect your moral reputation. Fun and games all around!
What people who buy into this way of thinking miss (my former self included), is that having the time and the emotional capacity to take in everything is a privilege that a lot of people just don’t have. Between jobs, kids, a social life, self-care, managing illness (mental or physical), and all the other demands of every day life, it’s unfair to expect everyone to have the same amount of disposable time to engage with social media in exactly the way we believe they should. It’s especially unfair to then punish them if they can’t.
And throughout all this pressure to keep up with every last post, whatever your reasons, who’s actually benefitting? As far as I can see, we all end up with worse sleep, heightened anxiety, more social comparison, shitty body image, less connection to our offline lives and a whole host of other mental side effects that studies continually show are linked to higher social media use. Who is this good for?
The cold hard truth is that primarily, it’s good for the platforms. All of which make more money the longer we spend scrolling. Social media algorithms are designed to figure out what will keep us online the longest, so that more of our data can be collected and sold on to third parties. If they can instil a feeling of FOMO, that’s good for business. If they know that showing us the most emotionally intense content will keep us there longer, that’s what they’ll show us more of.
Everything about these apps is designed to make us feel like we shouldn’t miss a thing – from bright red numbers screaming for our attention to push notifications telling us someone we follow has posted. They want us to feel like we’re always out of the loop. They make billions from it. And they probably love the fact that we’ve picked up that pressure and started putting it on each other.
I think the only way that we keep ourselves okay (on social media and in life), is to make peace with missing things. There is no human way for us to keep up with all of it and also keep up with ourselves. We cannot scroll for 5 hours every day and also eat, sleep, work, rest, love, move, care and be *truly* well.
Although I haven’t totally found my sweet spot of healthy social media use, I know that I’m ready to tap out of the pressure. I give myself permission to miss things. I give myself permission to not have to hit the “you’ve seen every post” notification. I give myself permission to not keep up with every opinion on every cause when I don’t have the capacity. I give myself permission to not show up when I know it will be bad for me to do so. I give myself permission to take the pressure off – and I hope you give yourself that permission too.
Okay, you’ve officially reached the end of this newsletter, please feel zero pressure to take in anything else from me today!
Questions for the comments: Do you feel the pressure to keep up with it all? Do you allow yourself to tap out when it’s no longer good for you? If so, tell us your secrets! Or maybe hit me with a “not just you” if you feel me but don’t wanna share. 💜
👏👏Also I’ve given myself permission to be crap, to embrace the crapness, the wrongness. Though I’ve gotta say this is much easier when you’re living a fairly un-public life. Sending love, darling one ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I feel this - I have kind of stopped posting on social media in the past 18 months-2 years because it doesn’t feel good to me, but I still use it for privately messaging and sending things back and forth to people. I was talking to one of my close friends recently about how I feel like if I don’t reply to someone immediately I feel like they will be upset with me, but I don’t put that same expectation on anyone in my life so I why do I put it on myself? I’ve never had anyone tell me they were upset with my reply time but for some reason I feel the need to constantly check to make sure I don’t miss anything. I’ve been trying to work on this and be generally off my phone more, but like you said there’s so much info on social media I find myself feeling anxious if I take too long of a break.