In a world of constant connection, the “social battery” has become our new mental health metric. This article explores how we manage energy, embrace solitude, and combat digital exhaustion.
While some smartphone users are tearing their hair out over how quickly their devices lose charge after yet another update, others are analysing the synchronisation of a very different kind of battery: their social battery.
A new concept born of social media, this technological metaphor is increasingly taking hold in the collective imagination and everyday language, fuelled in particular by a wave of posts and memes. Put simply, a social battery refers to the amount of energy you can devote to social interactions before running “flat” and needing to recharge in calm and solitude.
A battery whose capacity varies depending on the model — of human. While some people can power through seven days a week of work events, social functions, and large gatherings with friends, others will have already exhausted their quota halfway through a birthday party, quietly slipping away to head home… if they didn’t cancel before turning up in the first place.
Introspection 2.0
“It took me several years to realise that when my diary was overflowing every week with events involving seeing people, I was actually panicking. Now I know myself better: I prioritise, I decline, and I alternate between lively evenings out and quiet nights alone on my sofa. To me, that’s mental health,” explains Laetitia, a lawyer.
This marks a major cultural reversal of recent decades. Between FOMO (“fear of missing out”) and JOMO (“joy of missing out”), social media is now clearly tipping the scales toward the latter.
Instagram accounts now actively promote staying at home and turning down invitations — a kind of introspection 2.0 that is often carefully staged.
“There’s a real paradox in someone who sets off to travel the world alone but still wants everyone to know about it,” observes philosopher Pierre-Henri Tavoillot, author of Do We Still Want to Live Together? The Challenges of Sociability (Odile Jacob, 2024). “There’s a form of ambivalence: on the one hand, a sense that relationships have lost substance, and on the other, a kind of frenzy,” he continues.
A Reflection of Exhausted Minds
In more academic terms, the idea of a social battery echoes the concept of social capital, developed by Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who had already diagnosed the erosion of social bonds in American society in his book Bowling Alone.
“Robert Putnam wondered whether we still had enough social capital to go bowling without feeling alone — which is, admittedly, a completely absurd choice,” the philosopher explains. “But he observed this shift and identified it as one of the major transformations of contemporary societies.”
In any case, if the notion of a social battery resonates so strongly with all of us, it’s because our brains genuinely seem exhausted. Overwhelmed by virtual stimuli and endless scrolling. “I draw a parallel between social media and junk food,” says psychoanalyst Fabienne Kraemer. “Virtual interactions are the junk food of relationships. They satisfy an immediate need and trick us into thinking we’ve connected with others, but unfortunately they’re empty calories that don’t nourish us.”
This was already the argument of American psychologist and anthropologist Sherry Turkle, who published Alone Together in 2011 — a still-relevant investigation into our digital habits, in which we are described as being “alone, together”.
That’s the paradox: while 35% of people aged 25–39 say they feel lonely, they also report feeling overwhelmed by social demands. At the same time as TikTok celebrates the concept of the “social battery”, spaces for socialising are disappearing. Many nightclubs, for example, are increasingly deserted — particularly by young women. Caught between virtual exhaustion and real-life loneliness, we have become experts at managing a battery that never truly recharges.
Read also: The unexpected link between willpower and functioning after poor sleep
The Social Battery in Numbers
44%
The proportion of people in France who say they meet a friend in person at least once a week.
237
The average number of notifications received each day by a teenager.
35%
The share of 25–39-year-olds who feel lonely, compared with 16% of those aged 60–69.
Sources: INSEE; Common Sense Media/Michigan Medicine (2023); Fondation de France.
This story was originally published by Raphaëlle Elkrief on the Marie Claire France website.
Translated and syndicated for Marie Claire Nigeria by Denise Eseimokumoh
