mental health and the workplace

Challenges facing social media managers + marketers marketers are expected to be online A LOT these days - we’re not just managing accounts, but also following trends, checking notifications, monitoring dozens of campaigns, and keeping up with the nonstop news cycle that could impact our brand(s) and marketing efforts.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

Sound like something your employees or your team might be experiencing? Keep reading.

The amount of time that social media managers and marketers spend online is uniquely intense, because we are on the front lines for breaking news, political events, interpersonal challenges, race relations, and more. We see news, misinformation, arguments, hate, and so much more happening online in real time.

For the last year, there have been dozens of digital wars going on around topics like COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, equity and inclusivity, the 2020 presidential election and subsequent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol building, anti-Asian hate, mass shootings and gun control, and so much more. For many of us, the emotional impact of this intense online landscape has also been compounded by the fact that, over the past year, we’ve been more physically isolated than ever before.

As Brené Brown writes in “Daring Greatly,” a 2011 study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Mental Health, “researchers found that physical pain and an intense experience of social rejection hurt in the same way.” This causes very real physical, emotional, and mental harm to spread throughout the digital world.

These digital wars go beyond organic interpersonal conversation and debate to the deliberate spread of propaganda and misinformation.

We don’t have room in this piece to discuss this phenomenon to the extent that it would require, so we recommend checking out this source to learn more about it!

Because we, as marketers and social media managers, have a front-row seat to these digital phenomena almost every day, it’s no wonder many of us wrestle with feelings of being tired, scared, frustrated or just plain over it.

Yet we keep returning to social media, not only because we need to be online for work, but also because—increasingly and especially over the past year—we’re online for everything else. We meet our friends there. We get our news there. We shop there. We date there. The result? An ever-replenishing source of dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. And just as we do with any substance, as we grow accustomed to a certain level of these hits, our tolerance becomes higher, and we end up spending more and more time online to achieve the same results.

And the answer isn’t always as simple as, say, deleting Facebook because. it’s literally part of, if not all of, our jobs. But this wasn’t what we signed up for. And we shouldn’t have to sacrifice our mental health for the sake of our jobs.

So, what’s a social media manager to do?

First, you can address the challenge with leadership and your team.

As an individual, you have a responsibility to advocate for yourself and your team and communicate with your team about the challenges you experience online.

Discuss the challenges of being online and managing your mental health in your 1:1s with management. Work as a team to find ways to get each other, and other members of your team, offline. Each full-time team member should, at minimum, take a one-hour break each day during which they are not expected to be online. This should be structured, and it’s up to both the individual and management to take responsibility for ensuring these breaks are given and taken.

Teams should work together to find creative ways to complete certain tasks and jobs offline. What Zoom calls can be turned into phone calls? What meetings can be canceled? What work can be done by hand and then transferred to a digital platform? There are so many things that can be done offline as a marketer. Take advantage of them!

Set healthy, sustainable boundaries with social media during both work and personal time.

This may mean anything from turning off notifications to setting up content creation processes to minimize time spent on platforms.

Social media was designed to be addictive, and social media managers and marketers are uniquely at risk for social media overuse and addiction.

Here are some red flags to watch out for, in both yourself and your team:

• Spending more and more time on your personal social media accounts during designated work time, compulsively checking for new notifications

• Mindlessly scrolling on your personal or work-related social media accounts

• Feeling irritable, frustrated, or annoyed frequently at work

• Slipping performance and a lack of engagement in work

Some healthy boundaries you can set to manage your relationship with social media may include:

• Signing out of personal accounts when at work

• Signing out of work accounts when on personal time

• Turning off app notifications

• Changing the physical location of social media apps on your home screen so you don’t mindlessly open them

• Intentionally curating your personal digital world

• Grouping on-platform tasks, so you can maintain significant pieces of time offline

• Setting your phone to grayscale (Google it!)

“Social Media Managers who are seeing and experiencing consistent, intense things online need time offline to process, reflect and rest. The energy and emotion online is real, and sometimes we need a break from the front lines,” says Amanda McLernon, Founder & CEO of McLernon and Co., and founder of the Keep Social Media Social™ mission and methodology.

Leaders: Create a culture of mental health positivity in your workplace

The healthier your employees are (both physically and mentally), the more productive they will be, so it’s ultimately in your best interest to encourage a culture of mental health positivity. It’s also your responsibility to look out for your team and help them thrive.

Have real conversations with your team about mental health, asking questions like, “How are you, really? How is your relationship with social media?” Don’t force your team to share, but make space for them to share. Lead by example by being honest and vulnerable when you are having a not-so-great mental health day, and communicate to your team how they can support you.

Share mental health resources with your team. Whether you regularly send out relevant articles, provide a monthly stipend for therapy, or offer a half-day off for mental health each month, providing resources to your team prioritizes their health, contributes to their productivity, and communicates that you genuinely care for their wellbeing.

Recognize the validity of mental health days, and support team members when they need time off for mental health as much as you would support time off for a physical illness.

Explore and creatively use your resources. Can you delegate occasional engagement to a coordinator or intern? Rotate more intense online tasks among team members? Batch similar tasks so employees can take more time offline on a daily basis?

Understand how people of different races, religions, etc. might be impacted in different ways by the content we are all seeing online. If you have team members that are part of a community that is impacted by a certain event or movement, they may need more space and grace to process.

These principles are written in the context of the workplace, but can also widely apply to schools, individual households, and other communities where individuals spend significant amounts of time online!

Bottom line: In this age of online intensity, those of us who live, work, and breathe social media have a responsibility to advocate for ourselves and our teams. We are real live humans, not machines. By working with leadership to create a culture of mental health, we empower ourselves and our colleagues to build a more positive and productive relationship with the digital world.