I feel like I go in cycles of what social media websites that I frequent. Maybe that’s just me, maybe it isn’t but here are some of my thoughts and observations.

One month I may spend hours on Pinterest scrolling through categories until I am hungry and have 30 new books to read. I pin things like crazy adding to boards that I may not look at very often. The next month however I may log into Pinterest only to get the little notification pop up next to the app to go away.

This is a common thing to happen to me on multiple sites, Tumblr is another really good example of this; there are months when I do not log in at all and some months I am on the website everyday reblogging and liking pictures that I will go back and scroll through my blog and laugh about over and over again.

YouTube is one of those rare websites that I will find myself on all the time, but what I am watching and consuming on the video sharing website can shift so drastically. Sometimes I watch daily vlogs, sometimes it’s Beauty and DIY, sometimes it’s Vine compilations because I need to laugh. I have so many people I subscribe to on YouTube but there are times when I am just not in the mood to watch their videos and other times I cannot get enough.

Twitter I can ignore for months on end, not tweeting not knowing what is going on in that space and not really letting that bother me. Facebook is the same way; I get on Facebook to merely look at those people that I know or knew in the past to see what their lives are like today.

The only difference with Facebook is that I don’t have the app on my phone anymore and I have found it to be very liberating.

I have a theory about my social media use and I wonder if it is the same way for other people. There are some days when I don’t go on social media, I am productive, I am busy, and for the most part I am happy. Then there are some days when I spend my whole day scrolling, I don’t feel those days are often but many of them are not happy days because I spend my time comparing my life to other people’s lives, why did they get more likes than me? How could I ever get to their popularity level? Why don’t I have more followers? I spend my time on social media on those day’s playing a game of “woe is me” and I hate that.

Social media burn out is a real thing in my mind, we sit and scroll looking at other people’s lives, pets, food, experiences and we sit and look at ourselves and try to figure out why that can’t be us. I could be alone in this but I have a feeling I am not. When we spend our lives online and allow that to control everything we are, everything we do, everything that we buy we don’t look at social media as being fun anymore and I would prefer my social media experience to be fun; not a chore.

Thoughts?

-MJ