What social media creators can’t say about their job
Cornell University
ITHACA, N.Y. – Burnout is common among social media creators, but many feel they can't speak openly about it because of financial pressures, audience expectations and a lack of workplace protections, according to new Cornell University research.
“I wanted to understand the nuances of social media content creation from a sociological perspective,” said Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication and co-author of the paper. “But interview participants kept pointing me toward harms from the psychological domain – ‘I can’t take a break. I’m exhausted. I’m beholden to platforms, sponsors and audiences.’”
Worse, Duffy said, creators have few mechanisms for protection from work-related harms, given their status as independent contractors.
For the most part, these admissions go unsaid, although the world’s biggest YouTube star, MrBeast – the 28-year-old who boasts more than 500 million followers in a career that started when he was 11 – opened up in an interview last year: “There [were] definitely times where I would cry. But if my mental health was a priority, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am.”
Duffy, with co-author and doctoral candidate Rosie Nguyen, found that content creator burnout is, in part, “unspeakable” – a product of a complex confluence of factors: the informal structural conditions of platform labor; the privileged status of creative work, seen by many as a “dream job”; and entrenched markers of power and social identity, with gender playing an outsize role.
Nguyen and Duffy analyzed three sources of data – 58 examples of creators’ self-authored content on TikTok and YouTube; 62 news media accounts; and 78 in-depth interviews the researchers conducted with creators – to compare how these workers define, attribute and mitigate burnout.
“Social media content creation is depicted as a ‘dream job’ in the popular imagination,” said Duffy. “It offers flexibility, autonomy, and for some people is quite lucrative. But our research highlights the much less auspicious elements of work in this space, especially the endemic nature of burnout, when your career is essentially shaped by platform conditions, over which you have very little control.”
The nature of creators’ “employment” – as independent contractors, with great freedom but none of the protections that full-time employees have – means that stress, loneliness and burnout loom large. The support, recourse and solidarity found in a traditional work environment don’t apply in this context.
“You are considered in a work relationship with these platform companies, but you’re not legally employed,” Duffy said. “One recurrent theme was, ‘If I take a break, I’m going to get punished by the algorithm.’ That’s one reason why this ‘unspeakability’ is part of the individualized nature of risk in the platform-dependent economy.”
A surprising theme from their findings was the role gender played in addressing the risks of burnout. “The male creators,” Nguyen said, “tend to resort to the ‘grinding’ ethos – keep grinding and you’ll overcome it. The women tend to resort to self-care or restorative practices.”
The researchers said a couple of recent developments – especially legislation introduced earlier this year by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, establishing a Creator Bill of Rights – are steps in the right direction. And movements like Creators 4 Mental Health, and trade organizations like the American Influencer Council (for which Duffy is an adviser), are important steps in bringing attention to the plight of today’s creative workforce.
For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.
Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.
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Journal
New Media & Society
Article Title
“Creator burnout is real”: Risk, responsibility, and un/speakability in the creator economy
Article Publication Date
7-Jul-2026
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