Lately, I’ve been rethinking my relationship with social media — especially Instagram — and questioning whether the way I’ve been showing up online still feels sustainable.

What started as frustration with algorithms and content pressure turned into something bigger: a realisation that constant connection, scrolling, and online noise were beginning to affect both my work and my everyday life.

So, in this episode, I’m sharing some honest reflections on online fatigue, analogue nostalgia, creativity, and the small changes I’m starting to make to create a slower, more intentional relationship with technology.

If you’ve been feeling exhausted by social media too, or craving a little more offline life again, I hope this episode makes you feel a bit less alone.

Welcome to Seasons in Business, a podcast for creative business owners who want to build something thoughtful and sustainable, at a pace that actually feels good. I'm your host, designer and printmaker Sarah Phelps, and if, like me, you're craving a slower, more spacious way to grow, with a little gentle encouragement along the way, you're in the right place. So turn off your notifications, grab a cup of tea or coffee, and get cosy.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back.
I want to start by saying I wasn’t sure whether to actually record this episode now or wait a bit longer, because although this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, it isn’t something I’ve figured out just yet.
In the end, I decided to share it anyway, so it’s probably going to be a bit rough around the edges, but I thought it might be helpful to just say out loud.
So I’ll start with a question: how are you feeling about social media these days? Love it, hate it, or feeling a bit exhausted by it all?
As you’ve probably guessed by the title of this episode, I’ve been rethinking my own approach to social media and the online world because I’ve been feeling pretty fatigued by it for a while now, and I know I’m not alone in that, because after chatting with other creatives, it turns out a lot of us are feeling like we’re on a hamster wheel, running like crazy and getting nowhere except exhausted.
For me personally, when I talk about social media, I’m mainly talking about Instagram. I’ve been on there for around fifteen years now and it’s where I’ve always focused my time and energy. Facebook always feels like a bit of a ghost town, LinkedIn feels like an endless corporate away day, and TikTok... I’m pretty sure I’m just too old for that.
So Instagram is, and has for a long time been, my place. And for a long time it was a fun space to share snapshots from life and work. I’d pop on and share work in progress or videos of me printing.
But over the past couple of years, something has really shifted.
The endless new features have made it tough to keep up, and the ever-changing algorithm feels absolutely impossible to please. I’m sure we’ve all spent time creating content, only for it to disappear into the void, because we’ve shared a post instead of a reel, or didn’t use the right hashtags. If hashtags even help anymore, it doesn’t feel fun and it definitely doesn’t feel sustainable.
And then there’s how the space feels. Because as great as Instagram is for discovering beautiful work or connecting with other creatives, there’s no denying that it looks much more curated and feels a lot more strategic than it used to.
So as we sit in our messy studios with half-finished projects around us, scrolling through the endless, perfectly curated squares, we can feel left behind, wondering whether everyone else has somehow figured something out that we haven’t.
Somewhere along the way, it can stop feeling like a place we naturally want to share and start feeling more like a platform we have to perform for. Creating from pressure instead of enjoyment.
And this is where I’m struggling at the moment. I find myself feeling like I should be posting on there, but not really wanting to because it feels like such hard work. Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to post as often as I know I probably need to in order to stay visible. Yes, I want the visibility, but I don’t have the endless time or energy to pour into that one part of business life.
And the more I’ve been thinking about all of this, the more I’ve realised it isn’t really just about Instagram. I think it’s made me start questioning my relationship with technology more generally, and how constantly connected I’ve become without even really noticing.
Lately, I’ve found myself feeling really nostalgic for the analogue lives we lived in the early two thousands, when we had computers at home but didn’t have internet. We had mobile phones, but only for calls and texts. And going online meant sitting down at a computer, at uni, or work, or an internet café, if anyone else is old enough to remember those.
In those days, we could finish the week and have no idea what anyone else was doing for two whole days unless we went out of our way to find out. We could wake up in the morning, have breakfast, get ready and not have a clue what was going on in the world unless we switched on the TV or picked up a newspaper. Evenings and weekends were spent just living life. Seeing friends, listening to music, watching films, going out. And the only way to record any of it was to carry a camera — a digital one, if you were lucky.
But somewhere along the way, that all changed.
Gradually, our phones got smaller and smarter, to the point where we can now carry our entire world around in our pocket. And as amazing as that is in so many ways, it also feels like something has been lost along the way. That ability to truly switch off and step away.
We can start the day by checking notifications before we’ve even fully woken up, and we can end it lying in bed, scrolling through videos.
When it comes to running a business, yes, we can reach a global audience with a single post — algorithms permitting — something that would have been impossible twenty years ago. But at what price?
Research shows that living this way — constantly stimulated, connected, and consuming — really does affect our brains, our sleep, our focus, and our nervous systems over time. Because our brains aren’t really built to absorb this much information, this constantly.
And in feeling those waves of nostalgia, I’ve been taking a closer look at my own digital life over the past couple of months, and I’ve been paying attention to how I use my devices and how I move through the online world.
In life in general, it’s been pretty surprising to notice how uncomfortable I’ve become with just the smallest moments of stillness. Moments when I instinctively reach for my phone because my brain is looking for stimulation — checking, scrolling, consuming — when I’m standing in a queue, waiting for the kettle to boil, or sitting on the sofa for five minutes.
It feels like it’s happened so quickly, but how and when?
I think part of what’s become really clear to me through all of this is that so much of my life and business is built around a slower, gentler rhythm. But the way I engage with social media often feels completely out of step with that. It feels really jarring. I hate that there’s often this nagging feeling of needing to show up, and I think that’s why I’ve reached a point where I want to make some changes.
So with all of this in mind, I’ve been thinking more intentionally about where I actually want my energy and attention to go in life and in work.
In terms of work, I don’t have a fully formed plan yet, but I’m looking at some options.
I know some creatives have left social media altogether, choosing to focus on longer-form content like newsletters and blog posts. I know others who are still on socials, but have chosen a day that they’ll be on a specific platform to post and then not check in again until the following week.
For me, the visual aspect of Instagram makes it hard to step away entirely, so I think I’ll be taking the latter approach. Popping on for one or two days a week to share content and check in, and then stepping away again.
I’m also thinking about the content I want to share on there, because I know I’ve fallen into the curated feed trap. I want to climb out. I want to get back to sharing printing-in-progress videos, a look behind the scenes, and also maybe pop up in person a bit more often. Just showing my face and talking. Not worrying about how polished it looks.
At the same time, I want to feel prepared to step back from social media if I ever decide it’s time. So I have been thinking more seriously about making changes behind the scenes in my business and putting my eggs in a few different marketing baskets.
I’ve known for a long time that evergreen content gives far better results in the long term. It’s the kind of content that keeps quietly working away in the background, months or even years after you’ve created it. And I think that’s what I’m being drawn to. Something slower and less dependent on constantly showing up every single day just to be visible.
Over the last year or so, I have been creating more evergreen content through blog posts and planning guides and this podcast, but I know I can do more to get it seen.
And that’s where Pinterest comes in. Because yes, I love a Pinterest board as much as anyone, but for too long I’ve mostly used it as a place to search for inspiration rather than a tool to share my own work.mMeanwhile, I have a whole library of blog posts, stationery projects, podcast episodes, and resources just sitting on my website.
So instead of endlessly creating content that disappears into the Instagram void, I’ll be focusing more on creating useful, lasting content and then using platforms like Pinterest to help people discover it over time.
And the same goes for SEO. I’ve been slowly improving pages on my website, refreshing older blog posts, and paying more attention to search terms and visibility. I will not pretend I’m an expert, but I’ve seen enough progress to realise that there is real value in building something that isn’t completely dependent on social media algorithms, so I’m definitely going to be working harder on that.
And then there’s the offline side of all of this, too.
Because the more time I spend online, the more I realise how much I value real-life human connection. Stepping away from screens a bit more, going to events, having conversations, meeting people in person instead of through a profile picture and a grid.
After five years of living in Derbyshire, I finally feel like I’m finding my way into the local creative community and it’s been wonderful. I’ve been enjoying woodland walks and long chats over coffee with amazing, creative women, and it’s reminded me all over again that there’s something about real-life interaction that social media just can’t quite replace.
Just last week I took part in my first wedding show in years. I spent the day at a beautiful venue in the Peak District, chatting to couples about their wedding plans and talking to other local suppliers about their businesses. And by the end of the day, I was tired, but I left feeling genuinely happy and energised.
And I think that’s part of what I’ve been craving lately — building a business that doesn’t exist entirely online. Showing up in real spaces for real conversations with real people.
Thinking more personally, there are some changes I want to make.
I don’t think the answer, at least for me, is complete disconnection. That would be unrealistic because I run a business online, I use social media for work, and some of the opportunities and connections I’ve had through the online space have been genuinely great. So while I’m not planning to throw my phone into a lake and disappear into the woods, I will be taking small, manageable steps to change some habits.
One of the first things I’ve already done is start deleting apps that I no longer use, or that take up far more time and attention than I want them to. I’ve tried time limits before, and as soon as I get that warning, I hit ignore. So I’m skipping that and hitting delete instead.
To stop myself picking up my phone — before it needs to be surgically removed from my hand — I’m thinking of leaving it on the other side of the room or in a different room entirely. I often do that when I work, but when I’m sitting on the sofa relaxing, it’s always there on the coffee table, within reaching distance, and it’s just too tempting.
Ultimately, my goal is to swap out the digital noise for activities that I find absorbing, that really make my heart sing. So I’ll be turning off the TV and turning on the record player, setting down my phone and picking up some sewing. And I actually have an embroidery pattern picked out and ready to order. And I want to head out into the garden and get my hands dirty.
I want to live a richer life, experience more, and waste less time. I want to create better boundaries, relearn how to be present and make more space for real offline living again. Bring back a little bit of that analogue life I’ve been missing.
Honestly, it’s still early in the process. And as I said at the start of the episode, I’m still figuring out what this looks like in practice. I do still love the creative side of social media and the connection it brings. I just don’t want it to feel like the thing that everything depends on. So for now, I’m paying closer attention to what feels more sustainable and more aligned with the kind of life and business I actually want to build.
I’d really love to hear how you feel about social media. Where are you finding the balance between being online for work and being present in your real life? Have you made any changes to how you use it? And if you have, what’s been working? Or maybe you’ve stepped away completely and found something else that fills that space instead.
Let me know your thoughts. Drop me an email at podcast@sarahandmaude.com, or come and say hello over on Instagram @seasonsinbusiness. I would love to hear from you.
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