Emma Gannon on setting digital limits
The writer and podcaster explores the link between social media and burnout.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
I need everyone to know that I did see that Emma Gannon also calls her Sunday link roundups “Sunday Scrolls,” and sat in embarrassment for about 10 minutes. —Kate
From where I’m sitting, Emma Gannon is the definition of doing it all. She’s the author of six successful books, including her recent fiction debut, Olive. She hosted the podcast Ctrl Alt Delete, which welcomed guests like Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, and Ava DuVernay. She also runs a successful Substack, The Hyphen, where she shares writing tips and article recommendations with over 23,000 subscribers. And yet, when I first reached out to her last month, I received an auto reply letting me know she was offline for all of June.
Turns out that Gannon tries to take a month off twice a year. She also doesn’t work on Fridays. And when she does work, she keeps a schedule crafted to avoid burnout. After growing up online and writing about it in her first book (also called Ctrl Alt Delete), she’s built a platform on the idea of navigating life in the digital age. But Gannon’s area of expertise is broad. Her books have explored everything from balancing creativity with productivity to combating self-doubt to grappling with motherhood and the decision to remain child-free.
I admire Gannon for the way she’s steadily built her platform, weaving together her many hats into one, uh, big superhat that allows her to create on her own terms: As a voice for Millennial women who have grown up, burnt out, and are facing a new chapter of life.
In this interview for paid subscribers, Gannon and I discuss the differences between our online upbringings and the ones teens are going through now, how social media contributes to toxic hustle culture, and the future of work in a digital world.
Your first book, published in 2015, was about growing up online. Seven years later, the US Surgeon General released a damning report about the effects of teen social media use. I'm curious if any of the things being talked about as symptoms of adolescent social media use—increased depression, isolation, anxiety—resonate with you at all? Or are they a product of a different digital time?