My Social Media Burnout

This week's content for class was significantly increased, particularly with reading materials. It is, no doubt, a lot to take in. Fortunately, I still am eager to keep learning more and more and to understand these principles of design more precisely. I have nowhere near burned out on the subject. But there is, however, something I have surprisingly burned out on: social media.

Of all the concepts I could have discussed in this post from this week's readings, the one thing that instantly struck me more than anything else was discovering the reality of habituation toward social media. I thought it was a merely a personal choice of mine to indefinitely step back from social media some months ago. But Jeff Johnson, in the first chapter of his book Designing with the Mind in Mind, gave my struggle a name. Some call it "social media fatigue." I prefer "social media burnout" (p. 4). The reality is that I have become thoroughly dulled to the momentary satisfaction that repeated exposure to social media once provided. The stimulus of a new post, another update, more pings, has left me less happy with even more feelings of loneliness than I would like to have admit.
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Now that I have released myself from this habituation by fasting from social media, I am a much happier person in general and more eager to connect with people through non-virtual means. I suggest that all who read this post should observe their recent experience with these technologies and consider doing the same. This experience with the technologies we create for users is real and dangerously powerful.