Last week I read an article about the growing number of burn-outs. Interesting fact about this phenomenon was the amount of burn-outs under younger adults, even teenagers. Burn-outs are common under employees, 50 years or older of age. Last year 1 out of 7 employees in the Netherlands experienced one or more symptoms of a burn-out.
The question is, what causes these burn-outs, and why do more and more younger people experience a burn-out?
This brings us to the subject of our Minor; Social Media. Psychologists state that people experience some sort of pressure to check their Social Media. They are somewhat addicted to this relatively new, and enormous, stream of information. Not only to keep up with their friends, but the need to check your e-mail for work also has a major impact on stresslevels.
The constant need to be online, for instance to skype with business relations, leads to exhaustion. Peer pressure also plays an important role as a cause for a burn-out, especially under teenagers. If teenagers, for instance, read a statusupdate on facebook about a party, and all of their friends are going to that event, they feel the need to also attend this party. If this goes on for a couple of months, in combination with their education and other obligatons, they will eventually be more vulnerable to a burn-out.
How can we stop this trend? Some companies (Volkswagen, Boston consulting Group) have already reacted to this phenomenon by introducing ‘offline days’, as a solution to the ‘non-stop work weeks’. Health organisations also give advice on how to avoid a burnout:
- Check your e-mail on fixed times during the day
- Seek help if you feel pressured to be online 24/7
- Turn your cellphone off during diner (so no Instagram photo’s)
As we’re young adults, we’re subject to these ‘social media burnouts’. So my question to you is as follows:
Do you experience pressure to be online 24/7? For work or your peer group. And how would you counteract exhaustion, caused by Social Media?
References
http://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/153318-1303/druk-social-media-speelt-rol-bij-burn-outs-jongeren
http://www.nu.nl/werk-en-prive/2454435/30-plusser-gevoelig-social-media-burnout.html
http://www.ggznieuws.nl/home/aantal-mensen-met-burn-out-alarmerend/
I want to start off by saying that I really like your article because of the fact that it pays attention to the side effect of our 24/7 online social community. I believe that this is a new element in the human society with the upcome of all the technical devices that make it possible to stay in touch everywhere we go 24 hours a day 7 days a week.There are positive and less positive facts of being connected all the time, and the less positive thing is indeed that people feel pressure to stay online and up to date all the time, not only with the social media features but also with other aspects of the internet.
If I look in my own personal sphere i see that people really do feel the need to stay online because otherwise they miss out ‘important’ information. Personally I don’t really feel the pressure to stay online 24/7 with my social media but it is a kind of a habit to check it at certain times of the day, quite strange actually now I think of it. There are also certain things that forces you to check for instance your mail, social media or blackboard for instance. With these things I sometimes do feel de need and urgence to check this multiple times a day and this sometimes makes me a little bit frustrated at busy days. I guess that this is a kind of pressure like you described.
To organize this all for myself I keep it quite simple, I just check everyting a few times and the rest of the time I just leave it. All the information that is getting in can wait for me until the next time that i want to check it. Maybe it also makes a difference that I don’t have the ability to stay online everywhere I go because I do not have a smartphone. So at the moment that I leave my house people can call me when nessecary but thats it basically! So I have enough moments for myself that I am offline and I really value these moments!
If people feel the pressure of all of this it might be an idea to also take more offline time for yourself. I always say, If it really is nessecary and urgent people will call me to have direct contact, if not than it surely can wait for a few hours.