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.

Adverts are an integral part of the web, without web advertising most sites wouldn’t be able to bring us all that wonderful content for free so it is a shame that this medium of advertising has become a problem.  Users now have to cope with the ever increasing on-slaught of banners, pop-ups, pop-unders impact ads and well the list goes on, surely webmasters have started to realise that their users will inevitably go else where?

Websites across the world have surrounded their content with animated advertising whether it be simple .gif files or more complex flash animations which are on-the-whole completely unnecessary; don’t get me wrong, flash ads can be intelligently created delivering a clear message in a slick manner but ultimately these type of adverts are distracting to the user, we are trying to attract new users not scare them off, aren’t we?

Companies littering sites with these adverts is not being helped by an industry that delivers facts stating that animated adverts receiving more response which naturally implies that animation brings response, however, in my experience this hasn’t been proven true, some of the most successful advertising campaigns that I have witnessed have been simple quality designs with limited or no animation.

“For some reason it seems to have escaped every body’s attention that if we annoy our users they will go somewhere else, now what use to an advertiser is a website with no users?”

All any website wants to do is increase its user base while at the same time making enough money to keep it afloat, if we keep cramming over the top advert animations into web templates eventually the users will leave which inevitably will mean the money will to.

Smashing Magazine, Web Designer Wall and even the New York Times are just a few sites that use static adverts well, while others, and we all know who they are treat their web pages like a fun fair.  It’s not just the sites mentioned that are moving to a simpler way to advertise there are a number of sites coming up with more intelligent ways to incorporate adverts so that it becomes a part of the design and not an added extra.

I am guilty of getting caught up in the easy sell to customers of animation, so I am willing to do my bit to make web adverts feel less ridiculous and to show those who request overly animated designs the way forward.  If you read this article, and agree with the concept that less is more then please try and do your bit, if we all do a little to help stop this over use of animation it will eventually force a good change within the industry.