Avoiding Social Media Burnout as a Teacher

In 2020 I deleted all of my social media accounts. At that time it felt dramatic, and many people around me thought I was stepping away temporarily, but for me it was necessary. I felt mentally fatigued by the constant scrolling (now called doomscrolling), the bombardment of information, and this overwhelming feeling that my attention was not my own, not to mention that I was spending hours on my computer virtually teaching my students.

As a teacher, I noticed how deeply it was affecting my presence. I was physically at home, but my mind and attention were somewhere else. This was from scrolling through countless education-related posts and absorbing an endless stream of opinions on parenting, leadership, and politics.

Over time, I became increasingly overstimulated. Even when the content was positive or informative, my brain felt cluttered and restless. This led to my inability to go to sleep, which only added to more exhaustion.

I finally reached a point where stepping away felt like the only option. When I did, the difference felt immediate. I felt calmer, more present (especially with a pregnant wife), and mentally clearer than I had in a long time. I spent less time comparing myself with others and more time focusing on the work directly in front of me.

THE COMPLEXITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE AS AN EDUCATOR

Recently, partly because of my writing for Edutopia and my partnership with The Empowerment Perspective Group, I’ve made the decision to return to social media, but this time with my own guidelines. As my role in education has expanded, I wanted access again to new instructional ideas and collaboration with other educators.

At first, my experience felt productive. I found strong classroom strategies, leadership ideas, and professional learning resources that pushed my thinking. Fast-forward a month or so after the honeymoon phase: I started seeing similar signs returning and strengthening. The algorithms have become even more powerful, and educational content is constant.

Most of you know how it goes: You click on an app. One interesting post leads to another, and even when you open an app with a clear purpose, you can often find yourself 30 minutes later consuming content you never intended to see. The challenge for me is that much of it is genuinely good. That is what makes social media so complicated for educators: It is not negativity pulling us in, but innovation and inspiration.

3 SOCIAL MEDIA RULES I USE TO HOLD MYSELF ACCOUNTABLE

Because I want to be able to take advantage of the positive aspects of social media, I’ve needed to approach it with the goal of balance in mind. The following three rules are how I hold myself accountable to use social media in a way that feels productive, without becoming completely draining.

1. Be intentional about what you consume. Never scroll for the sake of scrolling. When I turn to social media, I always go in with a purpose: looking for a specific strategy or solving a real classroom need. For example, if I want to try something new in my classroom, I will specifically search that strategy and then only look at the content that addresses my need.

This isn’t always easy. Like I mentioned before, once you’re on the app, you can quickly find yourself down a rabbit hole. But by taking the time to pause and consider what you are hoping to find, you can avoid a purposeless scroll: If there’s no clear reason to be on the app, you can probably put your attention elsewhere.

And since you already know what you are looking for, you can get off the app as soon as you’ve found it.

2. Utilize and practice what you learn instead of just collecting it. Choose one solid idea and actually try it, and make it work in your classroom before moving on to the next thing. I realized how easily inspiration could turn into burnout. I would spend time consuming ideas, saving posts, and feeling productive, but little of it translated into actual practice. I was collecting more than I was implementing.

That realization forced me to shift my approach. Instead of trying to absorb everything, I began focusing on fewer voices, educators whose ideas consistently challenged and grounded my thinking.

I also started relaying the information I found online to my team. This helped me bring the things I was seeing online to life in the classroom, and helped my team and I identify the things that were working. It is important to continually prioritize implementation over consumption, focusing on taking one strong idea or practice and applying it deeply rather than collecting dozens we do not return to.

3. Give your brain downtime. Step away from the input sometimes so you can think, reflect, and be present in your work and life. Constant information doesn’t always lead to better teaching, it just leads to noise. It is important to understand that boundaries matter just as much as intention and that positive content can become overwhelming without limits. I began setting specific times for engagement, being more mindful about when and how I used social media, and protecting space in my day where I did not consume anything at all.

As my responsibilities have grown both at home and professionally, I have become more intentional about where my attention goes. With a growing family of soon to be five, and an expanded leadership role from a supervisor of mathematics to overseeing all of academics, I find that my mental energy needs to be utilized intentionally. Attention is fragile, and when social media fills every quiet moment, it leaves very little space for genuine presence in the places that matter most.

As stated before, social media is not inherently harmful for educators; rather, it has transformed professional learning by making collaboration, resources, and support more accessible than when I first started in education 12 years ago. The challenge is not its existence, but the cognitive load that comes with constant exposure and the pressure to continuously consume and improve.

But by approaching social media with more intention, educators find a balance in growing their practice without feeling fully burned out.