‘You can't pause the internet': social media creators hit by burnout
But one hidden cost will be familiar to anyone coping with the 21st-century economy: burnout. The Guardian has spoken to five creators with a combined audience of millions who have all experienced degrees of workplace stress or fatigue.
'There's no off button in this job,' says Melanie Murphy, 35, who has been a social media creator since 2013. 'The algorithms never stop. You can't pause the internet because you get sick. If you vanish for two or three months completely you know the algorithms will bring your followers to new accounts who are being active.'
Dublin-based Murphy says her symptoms of burnout were 'complete fatigue' and a 'nerve sensation of tingling and brain fog.' A dose of Covid was then 'the straw that broke the camel's back', she adds.
There is also a self-consciousness that comes with struggling in a nascent industry some people may not take seriously – or cannot conceive of as being hard work, given its association with glamour or the ephemeral nature of social media fame.
'It's really hard to talk about my job impacting how bad I felt without people being like 'shut up you're so privileged',' Murphy admits.
She is not alone. Five out of ten creators say they have experienced burnout as a direct result of their career as a social media creator, according to a survey of 1,000 creators in the US and the UK by Billion Dollar Boy, a London-based advertising agency that works with creators. Nearly four out of 10 (37%) have considered quitting their career due to burnout as well, according to the research.
The World Health Organization defines burnout as the consequence of 'chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed', with symptoms including exhaustion, reduced effectiveness at your job and a feeling of mental distance from your work.
Others spoken to by the Guardian talk of creative block and their own lack of engagement with the material that, by necessity, they have to churn out on a regular basis.
'There's no HR department, there's no union,' says Murphy. 'If my husband got burned out, like I did, and literally couldn't stand up off the couch, he would have someone to call. The only people I could really call were creators.'
Shortly after the birth of her second child in 2023, Murphy had what she called a 'complete burnout breakdown'.
'My body was, like, 'I'm done'.'
Perhaps ironically, Murphy says, YouTube videos were a help in her recovery. She also sought out therapy and 'pulled back a bit' from work, having saved up enough money to cover a few months off. Now, after 'a lot of brain retraining stuff', she only posts two YouTube videos a month – having run at one or two a week before. She used to be 'very, very active' on Instagram but now posts only 'if I feel inspired to post'.
Now, Murphy and her husband, an airline pilot, 'kind of match' each other in earnings which 'does mentally take a bit of weight off'. Murphy's company makes 'a bit over' €100,000 (£86,000) a year. She says she has cut down heavily on unpaid work and changes to her work-life balance have probably reduced her earnings by about €20,000.
Murphy has 800,000 followers across YouTube and Instagram – her main sources of income are brand sponsorship – including from the Trainwell personal training app and online therapy company BetterHelp – and advertising revenue from YouTube, which shares a substantial cut of ad spend with creators.
Creators – people who make a living from making online content, often via brand sponsorships – lead a professional life that reflects the digital culture they are embedded in. It is fast, demanding and vulnerable to sudden changes of taste.
Becky Owen, the global chief marketing officer at Billion Dollar Boy, says the average full-time creator has to carry out a number of tasks to be successful, from planning, filming and editing content to managing relationships with brands; and, of course, engaging with followers.
Owen says the 'wheels are coming off' for many creators.
'It's prevalent. It's not just a few,' she says, adding that there can also be an emotional toll because a lot of creators 'monetise themselves' and turn their lives into content.
'Beyond getting new commercial deals, the greatest challenge creators face is managing the business side of what they do. They're juggling countless responsibilities, trying to excel at all of them, often before they even have a chance to focus on the content itself. That's where they really need support,' says Owen.
Allison Chen, 22, a New York-based creator who specialises in baking, cooking and lifestyle content and has a combined audience of 1.3 million across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, says the pursuit of views and engagement can be wearying. It can leave you feeling 'regardless of how many views you get, there is always a higher peak to achieve'.
'Social media creators also have the same comparison and self-esteem issues that regular social media users have,' she says.
Chen says deleting social media apps has helped. Her routine involves downloading Instagram and TikTok whenever she needs to upload content – and then deleting them. 'I repeat it every day,' she says.
London-based Hannah Witton, 33, suffered in a similar way. She restructured her professional life to avoid burning out completely, having been a full-time creator since 2015. Witton took three months of maternity leave after giving birth to her son in 2022. Three months, she says, is the longest amount of time she has seen any creator take off after having children.
'The shortest amount of time I've seen someone take off [for maternity leave] is three days. I wish I could have taken longer off but I just knew it wasn't possible.'
When she returned, Witton found she was trying to produce the same amount of YouTube and podcast content – on sex and relationship advice – within half the time, with the added financial burden of paying for a producer to help make her content.
'Something had to suffer. And the thing that was suffering was me and the content – and my relationship with the content,' she adds. 'Audiences are smart, and I think they can pick up on those kinds of things.
This week Google-owned YouTube called on the UK government to take creators more seriously as a profession, in recognition of the 'profound economic and cultural contributions they bring to the UK's creative industries'.
Meanwhile, creators used to broadcasting advice to others are having to rally themselves through the hard times.
'It is possible to get through this and still earn good money while not spreading yourself too thin, which many creators do,' says Murphy.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
25 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Rayner's housing quango bosses spend thousands on hospitality and travel
Angela Rayner's housing quango has spent nearly a quarter of a million pounds on expenses for directors. Officials at Homes England have spent £240,000 on travel, hospitality, food, accommodation and office supplies since 2021. The revelation comes after Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, allocated £39 billion for affordable and social housing over the next 10 years in the spending review. Homes England, set up in 2018 to fund more affordable housing across England, will distribute 70 per cent of this money. The quango defended the spending as necessary for executives who travel for work and said there was a strict approvals process for expenses. Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager of the TaxPayers' Alliance, which obtained the data through Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, said: 'Taxpayers will be dismayed that Homes England bureaucrats are racking up more expenses. 'This is a clear example of a runaway quango. Rather than supporting the Government's new house-building targets, they are piling extra costs onto construction companies making new homes. 'If Labour want any chance of hitting their housing targets, ministers must get a grip on Homes England and focus on getting spades in the ground.'
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Is Europe finally getting an affordable alternative to short-haul flights?
Few things evoke the romance of travel more powerfully than night trains, a form of transport that is enjoying a veritable renaissance at the moment. But there is one serious snag: the price. Leaving aside the truly eye-watering cost of travelling on luxury trains such as the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (from £3,530pp), two-bed en-suite cabins on many of Europe's regular night trains can easily set you back £400, while even berths in a four- or six-bed couchette can come in at more than £100. Compare that with the prices you can get on a low-cost airline – Brussels to Vienna with Ryanair, for example, from as little as £25 – and it's easy to see why, even if they'd rather take a night train, so many still choose to fly. A new player Step forward Nox, a Berlin-based enterprise that is developing a radical new sleeper train concept for Europe that will deliver totally private, spacious cabins (for one or two people) at a price comparable with what is charged by short-haul airlines. 'Sleeping while a train gets you across Europe is a great concept,' says Nox co-founder Thibault Constant, an inveterate night train traveller known as 'Simply Railway' to his many followers on YouTube and Instagram. 'But today people [often] have to share their cabins with strangers, beds are tight, and it's often more expensive than air travel. We want to change that and make night trains an essential part of European travel.' It's an ambitious plan, still very much in the early stages. There are blueprint designs for what the cabins would look like (spacious and sleek), a target start date of 2027 and a selection of 100 routes which within a decade would link cities such as Barcelona, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Budapest and Rome, with Brussels and Paris serving as key hubs for Eurostar passengers from London. There is also a pledge on price, with single cabins costing from €79 (£67) and doubles €149 (£127). As with low-cost airlines, dynamic pricing will apply and fares could rise when demand is strong. But the aim is to keep them low by maximising passenger loads and providing an experience that, in terms of convenience and enjoyment, is light years away from that offered by budget airlines. In addition to privacy – no couchette-sharing with strangers – and two-metre long beds, the key attraction with Nox will be cabins which, while not offering en-suite facilities, will have considerably more space. 'Many night trains offer private compartments, but we identified a major gap in the experience: people don't necessarily want to go straight to bed after boarding,' says Constant. 'Most current options focus solely on providing a bed in a compact space. But many prefer to finish their workday, unwind, enjoy a meal, or simply take a moment for themselves before sleeping. 'Our cabins are not just places to sleep; each is equipped with one or two seats and a table, giving passengers the freedom to choose how they spend their time onboard.' Less than luxurious Certainly what Nox is proposing will set it apart from other European sleeper train operators, most notably Nightjet, the Austrian state-owned company that over the past decade has done so much to revive this much-loved form of travel. Nightjet, which operates a swathe of routes linking northern and central Europe, has itself introduced dramatic innovation to meet the growing demand, most notably with its ' mini cabins ' – small Japanese capsule-style spaces offering privacy if not exactly room to swing a cat. While mini-cabins on many Nightjet routes can be had for less than €100 (£85) and a berth in a shared four or six-bed couchette for something similar, better-sized private cabins for one or two are frequently more than €200pp (£170) – a price point that, as with comparable fares on the Caledonian Sleeper (London-Scotland) and the Night Riviera (London-Cornwall), puts many people off. European Sleeper, a Netherlands-based operator that offers journeys from Amsterdam to Prague via Brussels and Berlin is more competitive, with berths in six-bed couchettes costing as little as €69.99 (£60) one-way and seats even less – €59.99 (£51). But much of its rolling stock is very dated, and customer reviews are not always favourable. A tough nut to crack With so many vested interests and intricate planning requirements, the European night train market is not an easy one to break into. Just last year, Midnight Trains – a private French start-up that planned a fleet of luxurious 'hotel-on-rails' sleeper trains crossing the continent – had to bow out after failing to secure sufficient backing. European Sleeper experienced its own setback this year when the inaugural run of a new route from Brussels to Venice was denied entry into Italy. But specialist train operators are hopeful that Nox will succeed. 'The Nox trains look fantastic, and if they can get it going there will definitely be an appetite for it,' says Simon Hodge, managing director of Tailor Made Rail. 'With his travel experience, Thibault Constant definitely knows what is needed in a sleeping carriage.' Cat Jones, founder of flight-free specialists Byway, says Nox represents a 'real opportunity' but that it will face considerable challenges, not least in securing finance and adequate rolling stock. 'If Nox succeeds, it would be a significant step forward for sustainable, overnight rail travel in Europe, encouraging more innovation and choice for travellers,' she says. Constant and fellow Nox co-founder Janek Smalla are mindful of the challenges. 'We believe in starting small and learning fast,' says Smalla. 'Rather than committing to a large fleet, we're launching with a single line, testing our assumptions in the real world, and refining the product before expanding.' Night train lovers worldwide will wish the enterprise well. As to whether it can deliver – only time will tell.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
If Ryanair didn't exist, would you have to invent it?
Things can only get worse: that was the outlook from the boardroom of a small Irish airline called Ryanair. Forty years ago this week, it launched flights between Waterford in southeast Ireland and London Gatwick. The plane making the maiden journey on 8 July 1985 was a 15-seat Brazilian-made Bandeirante aircraft. Over the next few years, as the airline expanded its operations over the Irish Sea, the losses mounted. By 1989, investors were down £20m. A young accountant named Michael O'Leary had just joined Ryanair. 'We had a business class and a frequent flyer club and all the rest of it,' he later told me. 'But the fares were about 20 per cent cheaper [than BA and Aer Lingus], which meant we just lost more money than they did.' In a last-ditch effort to stave off closure, Mr O'Leary travelled to Love Field in Dallas, Texas: the home of Southwest, a young and thriving low-cost airline. The visionary in charge, Herb Kelleher, was happy to share in the secret of his success: not chasing after more established rivals, but cutting costs and fares to entice an entirely new market to take to the skies. 'What took real brains and real balls was to say, 'We can charge $10 a seat and still make money'.' The last throw of the dice before closure was to halve fares across the Irish Sea. As you will have noted, Ryanair stayed aloft. Those of us who wearily boarded overnight buses and ferries between the UK and Ireland were the first in line. The airline carried 5,000 people in its first year. Today, many passengers step aboard Europe's biggest budget airline every 13 minutes. In the 1990s, the conditions for a low-cost revolution were created by the expansion of the UK's free aviation market to pan-European open skies. Initially, though, it was a different start-up that made the running: easyJet. Stelios Haji-Ioannou had also made the journey to Southwest in Texas. Yet the founder of what is now Britain's biggest budget airline took the template further. Sir Stelios, as he has become, built a carrier that bypassed travel agents, shunned the traditional paper ticket, and turned inflight catering from a cost to a revenue stream. So, if Ryanair didn't exist, would we have to invent it? Not strictly, because easyJet and others would have been happy to roll out the low-cost, low-fare model across Europe without an Irish competitor. However, Michael O'Leary made key decisions that have transformed the aviation landscape and made Ryanair dominant: Using small regional airports instead of major hubs, such as Beauvais, Charleroi and Hahn rather than Paris CDG, Brussels and Frankfurt, respectively. These airports came with minimal or even zero charges, allowing simpler, swifter operations. Ordering new Boeing 737s by the hundred shortly after the tragedy of 9/11, when no one else was buying. The price was so low that it secured Ryanair's cost advantage during the first two decades of the 21st century. Making online check-in mandatory, saving a fortune on airport costs while opening up a new opportunity for ancillary revenue. In terms of durability, Michael O'Leary is the Queen Elizabeth II of the airline world. He became the sixth chief executive of Ryanair in 1991. While easyJet and British Airways have been changing leaders roughly twice a decade, the Irish CEO has been in charge for 34 years. During that time, Mr O'Leary has cheesed off countless people – from ministers and aviation leaders to passengers whose customer-service expectations are out of alignment with cost-obsessed Ryanair. Yet he has also empowered more than two billion people to pursue their travel dreams, indulge in long-distance romances or two-home lifestyles, or simply get to work. And all of them without a single fatal accident, making Ryanair the safest airline in the business. Happy birthday. Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been flying on Ryanair and writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.
