Content Creator Quit YouTube After 12 Years in ‘Output Mode’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Hannah Witton explained how, after 12 years of content creation, she was relieved to quit the hamster wheel of YouTube and leave her dream job.
“For the past decade I had been in what I call constant ‘output mode,’” Witton said in an article written for The Guardian. “Creating regular YouTube videos, podcast episodes and social media content puts you on this hamster wheel where you always have to be creating.”
“The fear is that if you dare take a break, people will forget about you, the algorithm gods will punish you and your income and career will inevitably suffer,” she continued. “The pressure to always be posting is real. And the problem with being in constant output mode is that you never get a chance to be in ‘input mode.’ This is where you get to learn, explore, refill the well, take care of yourself and nourish your curiosity.”
While YouTube is many people’s dream job—whether it be because of the fame, money or ability to work for yourself—the reality is that being your own brand and business is not as easy as it seems. After ten years of this grind, Witton began to feel the toll even though she wasn’t ready to call it quits.
She began to feel the weight of constant creation, finding herself uninspired and bored even when talking about the things she was most passionate about. Then, in 2022, she was forced to take a break when she became a first-time mother. She took a three-month break before returning to YouTube part-time.
“Initially I loved coming back to work part-time, but all the cracks from before were showing and getting harder to ignore,” she said. “The content was suffering and I was running out of steam. I had even less time to dedicate to input mode, which meant I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas.”
“The other thing that was becoming unsustainable was my mental health. After years of being online I had become hyper-vigilant about anything I posted,” she added. “I would overthink everything I said and I was beginning to not even trust my own judgment on things, which felt scary and unsettling.”
This brought her to the unthinkable realization that she might be better off leaving YouTube behind rather than forcing herself to continue this soul-sucking grind.
“As soon as the answer came to me, I relaxed. I was going to quit,” Witton said.
Witton continues to work in the content creation sphere, helping other creators face the burnout that smothered her. She is particularly focused on helping them find relief from the pressure to keep their upload schedule going indefinitely rather than taking a break when one is needed.
“I’m also still making my own YouTube videos and posting on social media but I’m trying to treat it as a fun, low stakes, hobby that I take somewhat seriously rather than putting immense mental and financial pressure on myself like I have done before,” she shared on Instagram.
In another post, she shared, “In 2024, I’m embarking on a new career consulting and mentoring creators to help them organise the behind the scenes of their businesses, launch membership platforms like Patreon and avoid burnout.”
Through a system like this, creators could maintain a YouTube channel for their whole career rather than crash and burn like Witton after maintaining their brand on their own for a decade.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Young people all over the world dream about becoming an influencer, but some internet personalities have left that life behind in order to live a normal life.
Ingrid Nilsen was just 20 years old when she started her YouTube channel in 2009. She made videos for 11 years, racking up over 3 million followers. However, she soon started to feel like she needed to make a change.
“As I kept vlogging more, I realized that sharing the mundane parts of my life were actually the things that I needed to keep for myself,” Nilsen told NBC. “It made me, as I got older, want to pull away because I wanted to figure out who I was, and I was trying to figure out how to do that on the internet.”
The former YouTuber said her “big moment” came in 2020.
“I thought to myself, ‘I can stop. I can stop doing this now,’” she explained.
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