How to Deal with Social Media 'Fatigue'
It's a sad fact that you must join every single social network in existence or risk vanishing from the face of the earth. But this is leading to "digital fatigue" among social networkers. How to deal with this? We have the answer.
The Times Style section today highlights the plight of the over-socially networked. The key, it seems, is to have a system. For example, Graham Hill, the 40-year-old founder of TreeHugger is so overwhelmed that he actually schedules Twitter posts weeks in advance, and is considering paying someone to "edit and post content for him so he can spend more time offline."
So, that's one system. Here's my system for what to do if you find yourself consumed with anxiety over maintaining the follower counts on your dozens and dozens of social networking presences—if life begins to seem like an unending stream of status updates and check-ins:
1) Link all your social media accounts—Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Tumblr, Last.fm, etc.—to a single Twitter feed. You can easily do this using services like Ping.fm, OnlyWire or Hellotxt.
2) Write down the password to that Twitter feed on a napkin.
3) Take the napkin to the top of the tallest mountain you can find.
4) Burn the napkin.
5) Eat the ashes.
6) Vanish into the underbrush.
Digital fatigue: solved.
