New Creator Economy Survey on Mental Health and Stress Coping Strategies: 79% of Creators Have Experienced Burnout

A new study by Tasty Edits conducted an in-depth, semi-structured survey of 160 creators to gain a better understanding of their mental health and stress coping strategies. The results are striking. 79% of professional creators say they have experienced burnout in the past. However, they also show that successful creators on platforms like YouTube have developed strategies for coping with the mental toll of content production.

Though the creator economy is burgeoning, creator burnout has emerged as a serious problem. For years, reports of people losing all their energy and interest in their work and giving up their creation efforts have been circulating,” says Alex Lefkowitz, founder of Tasty Edits. “However, so far there has been no systematic investigation to get an in-depth understanding of creators’ own approaches to mental health and burnout. Tasty Edits’ study set out to address this knowledge gap.”

The study winnowed down a list of over 29,000 creators to conduct an in-depth survey and follow-up interviews with 163 of them. Respondents were asked how they deal with stress, how their personal and private networks help them thrive, and whether they had experienced creator burnout in the past.

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The results, summarized in a 20-page report, show that 79% of creators have experienced burnout in the past. That number is even higher among those who struggle to monetize their channels (83%).

To deal with stress, 98% of successful creators regularly take time off, 93% rely on physical exercise, 92% integrate self-care into their daily schedule and 56% meditate. In addition, 45% regularly see a mental health professional. Furthermore, a majority of creators (63%) say that delegating tasks is a key stress coping strategy.

The majority of creators surveyed were US-based (60%), between 26 and 35 years old and active on YouTube (98%), Instagram (69%) and Facebook (53%). On YouTube, they have an average of 50,000 to 250,000 subscribers. 37% of them make a full-time income off the platform, 19% of them earn over $5,000 per month. The results also show that channel size is not the most reliable predictor of a creator’s income. Other factors are more important, including how long they have been active, how frequently they post, how many hours they spend creating and the diversity of their monetization strategies.

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