I am a child of a new-media generation so naturally I have embraced all that social media has to offer; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest and Linkedin are all on my social radar, plus a few others.

Until recently I hadn’t realised how much of my time these social services where taking or even how many I was using; not to mention the pressure I was putting on myself trying to maintain them. This made me ponder about all the recent talk of social fatigue and the various cases of depression and addiction reported by the media.

So let’s break it down and look at each problem in isolation:

Social fatigue

This is the feeling of being totally overwhelmed with the amount of information you are receiving through your accounts, combined with the commitment you have made to update your own.

Social addiction & depression

This is a little harder to pin down as a problem, but I think most social network users would admit a certain level of addictive behaviour when using social media (I know I do). Recent studies have also shown links between Internet addiction and depression, although which comes first is uncertain. The main cause of social depression though seems to be the following of other peoples lives and the inevitable comparisons that we make between ourselves and of those that we follow.

I can see how these two conditions have entered our lives in this social revolution and why some are suffering more than others; now I am no medical professional, but from my own social media experiences I know there are things that we need to be aware of and things that we can do. Here are my suggestion of how to get the most out of social networks without reaching your natural limits:

Limit your social platforms

I have had to do some cutting back myself, I am a registered user for all the networks mentioned in the opening of this article; but I now only use three regularly, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are now my chosen networks. By all means try out all social networks but only focus on a few, this will naturally lighten the load.

Remember, everything is not what it seems

I follow a lot of people on my Twitter network, and they all seem to be having an amazing time, articulate and happy, living in sunny places with perfect families! Now, this is great and I am happy for anyone who is living life to the full; but I know how easy it is to compare your life to theirs, just remember one thing, the people you follow are only showing you one side of their life! ?Most people don’t air their dirty laundry online so we get a skewed perspective, remember, everyone has bad days and negative things happen to everyone, some just choose not to broadcast it.

Have a day off

This is easy, just have a break, whether it is the weekend or a random day in the week! This will allow you to refocus on the important things in life and to be social in the real world.

This is a new world and the full impact of our digitally connected lives is still yet to unfold. Just keep it all in perspective and make sure the balance between the digital and real world is equal.

Two years ago the newspaper industry started to suffer more than most due to rapid drop in advertising revenues, however this was not only an issue that newspapers have had to deal with virtually every type of media organisation had to make substantial cut-backs of one kind or another to counter-act the problems caused by the financial crisis. But is it really the financial crisis that has caused this massive decline in ad-revenues or has something been wrong with the industry for longer than they realise?

The most important change has been end users who have finally become media aware, the user understanding of information and its delivery has had to become more complex due to the many ways in which we live our lives, keep in touch with our friends and keep abreast of what is happening in our world. There was a day when newspapers were the only dedicated way of getting quality reliable news coverage, or information about friends, but as we all know too well those days are long gone, radio, print, and increasingly the web now flood the markets that newspapers once owned each taking a slice of the pie which obviously cannot sustain them all.

So as the users have become smarter the companies that serve them have made mistakes, the main problem that I have seen within the local newspaper trade has been the decrease in senior positions being held by skilled employees from across all disciplines of a company and too many being held by commercially driven personel. When my career began many Managing Directors were Ex-Editors, production staff would have a place in the hierachy along side commercial people, all these things helped bring balance within the business giving both good quality execution of their product while at the same time looking at the commercial benefits. What we see now is the single minded pursuit of money with no knowledgable concern about the quality of what is produced, granted Editorial standards are traditionally high but in recent times production costs have been slashed which has caused a massive decline in the quality of editorial and advertising while commercial teams grew from strength to strength, which has proved to be at the detriment of the products they serve.

The frantic chase of the cash has made these businesses lose site of what they are there for. Instead of keeping prices reasonable over the years basic greed in standard cost increases both in cover price and advertising rates has priced most newspapers out of a now extremely competitive advertising market, particularly since web advertising started to take hold. Newspaper and Radio now have to compete with a business model that suddenly doesn’t have the same overheads as they do or the same restriction which means the web industry is just more robust and able to cope with dramatically slumping markets in this modern time.

Obviously we have seen both print and radio try and move towards online offerings and in most cases unsuccessfully; I can’t say that my company has made a slick transition, we are just lucky we have a few commited skilled people that have made it their focus to make this work, we are however seeing very different results at the vast majority of other titles. This lack of success is again down to the lack of skilled individuals that can guide a company through this troubled transition. Any new product needs to be user focussed first while any commercial gain should be seen as the natural result of that great product. Google and Yahoo are prime examples of how getting the product right will lead to natural revenue; their focus wasn’t always money!.

Ultimately the shift in power within the media industry from production to a commercial drive is what has killed it, but this hasn’t happened overnight it has been happening for more than 20 years; the skewed focus within a user based industry has forced a change and potentially the death of some really important institutions the world over and I believe that these institutions are too far gone to make the changes necessary for sustained survival in the new media world. I predicted ten years ago that this would happen long before the business I worked for had a website worth visiting, unsurprisingly my predications were met with scepticism by some of the very same people that now lead the way.