Combatting social media burnout

Recently, I opened my inbox to find an email from a news outlet to which I subscribe, with the subject line: "The Climate Apocalypse is Here." When I logged on social media, I saw that many people in my community were reacting to the announcement that Uyinene Mrwetyana, a University of Cape Town student who had been missing, was murdered. Her murder prompted others, including some people close to me, shared their #MeToo stories, and outed their abusers. 

A sense of helplessness and loss enveloped me — and it wasn't the first time. As a person invested in social justice activism, and who participates in it mostly online, I frequently feel overwhelmed by both the lack of news of any strides towards progress as well as a constant stream of bad news. Additionally, as a person living in the intersection of my identities as a woman who is black and from a developing country, the constant stream of bad news feels more immediate to me than I think it might feel to others. For instance, seeing the subject line "The Climate Apocalypse" hit me hard because, according to climate scientists, developing countries like mine are going to bear an estimated 75 percent of the costs of the climate crisis, despite producing just 10 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. 

I believe that a lot of people like me are suffering from a social media burnout caused by consuming, interacting, and engaging in online activism. This burnout is characterized by the emotional stress of feeling helpless to do anything about crises in other countries, or even in our own. The magnitude of these problems seems beyond our ability to impact. In their 2001 study of occupational burnout, psychologists Wilmar Schaufeli, Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter found that burnout was composed of three symptoms: overwhelming exhaustion, cynicism and detachment, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment — qualities that seem to apply well to the "occupation" of being an online activist.

I noticed this type of burnout when the Sudanese government was sanctioning the killing of pro-democracy protesters. An activist group suggested that folks change their profile pictures to a specific shade of blue to show their support of these protestors and spread awareness on the Sudan crisis. While many people complied in a bid to show solidarity, others made memes suggesting that changing one's profile picture was futile in quelling the situation on the ground. Similarly, when the Amazon was burning, many people in countries around the world expressed their frustration at their inability to help beyond spreading awareness on social media.

Recently, I have been trying different ways to help me cope with this type of burnout. I have tried logging off, even for a few days, to let the dust settle after trending topics are triggering for me. In an August 19 episode of Bitch Media's podcast "Propaganda: Feminist Beyond Burnout," feminist activist and writer Feminista Jones made a similar argument. "I think I would tell someone approaching burnout to step back because the world is not going to end because you stopped today, right?" She said. "You have the right to walk away and understand that the house will not burn down tomorrow just because you decided to take a nap." Logging off may not solve the problem that is worrying you, but it is a form of self-preservation that can protect you from things that compound the trauma you're experiencing, like hateful comments from trolls. 

I have also found that when I feel helpless about a crisis that is far away, I can always find a related or otherwise relevant cause that is closer to home to support. For instance, while most Kenyans could not directly help people fighting the Amazon fires, many of us contribute to funds that go into fighting forest fires on Mount Kenya. Just like the Amazonian fires, fires on Mount Kenya are mostly caused by people clearing forests for agricultural activities such as animal grazing and cultivation. 

However, while our individual efforts at combating this type of burnout are important, it is time the online activism space as a whole acknowledged its existence and came up with sustainable solutions towards it.