✌️ This newsletter is about YOU

Metricooler, you've seen it. 

The meme about the client who sends a "quick change" request at 7pm on a Friday. 

The TikTok where someone jokes about checking their work phone mid-vacation with a shrug and a crying emoji. 

The thread that asks "is every SMM over it?" and gets hundreds of upvotes. 

It's funny, and relatable, and a little too accurate, and that's exactly why it keeps going. When chronic stress becomes shareable content, it stops feeling like a problem worth fixing and starts feeling like just part of the job.

The thing is, it was always a real problem. It just took a while to get named properly. 

Google Trends shows how searches for “social media manager stress” and “social media manager burnout” are spiking:

In r/SocialMediaManagers, the most upvoted post of the past year was “Build 30k followers, but I’m exhausted managing it!!" and around 14% of the community's top threads touched on burnout, overwork, or difficulty disconnecting, which doesn't sound like a lot until you remember that it is the go-to subreddit for anyone trying to get into the profession. The well-being posts are common and resonating harder than ever.

Lia Haberman surveyed her audience ahead of 2026 and asked how they felt about the year ahead. The words that came back were: “fatigue”, “overwhelmed”, “impossible”, “exhausted”, “drained”. 

Rachel Karten's community report found that 77% of social media managers are burnt out. 

Zaria Parvez (Dealing with burnout as a Social Media Manager) and Lucy Hall (Burnout in Social Media Jobs), two well-known professionals, have also discussed it openly as a structural feature of the role. The Guardian also ran a piece on it.

On TikTok, searches for burnout among social media managers return a stream of content ranging from genuinely painful to jokes that land because they're a little too close to home. That gap between "this is funny" and "this is actually serious" is where the normalization lives.

We built the Well-Being in Social Media Professionals 2026 Report to go beyond the vibes and put real data behind what people were already feeling: 

and that overtime and always-on culture are far more common than most job descriptions would suggest. 

But the picture isn't only dark:

There’s still hope and reasons that make this industry exciting.

We can't fix the industry overnight, but we've spent years trying to make the day-to-day a little more manageable:

If you’re new-ish to social media, get familiar with the role, responsibilities, and expectations (it’s more than making memes, but you already knew that): The complete social media manager’s guide.

Creating reports gets mentioned repeatedly as one of the most draining tasks. You can do that for free with this tool, or using this template. And start saving some hours and a few headaches.

Most say AI is helping take some weight off their shoulders. Here’s a guide to create your marketing plan with AI and 45 ready-to-use prompts for social media.

Another major pain point is having to constantly come up with new ideas. If you feel that too, here are 4 tips to reduce creative pressure and develop sustainable content systems.

We put this report together because the conversation was already happening, and it deserved better than a meme. Take good care of yourself 💛