The quiet crisis of fatigue is imploring us to slow down

It is said to be the year of analogue. We’ve invited ourselves back to a time when things take longer, feel heavier and demand more of us than a swipe or a tap. It appears we yearn for the soft sigh of a nib on a piece of paper and the ritual of physically waiting. Our world is swollen with speed and static, and stepping offline has been rebranded as an act of resistance – a choice not to be plugged, tracked or optimised.

This act of rebellion is not a yearning for nostalgia. Despite the reels and online stories of people sharing what they were doing in 2016 (mostly pre-Covid capering), the dominant emotional register of this year is fatigue.

The state of the world – and the news that reflects it – is one example. In a recent article about joy and fatigue, the Nieman Journalism Lab argued that relentless crisis coverage has made fatigue a central issue shaping news habits, driving emotional burnout and disengagement with world matters.

As exhaustion deepens, “audiences increasingly manage their energy by limiting exposure, redefining when, how and whether news fits into daily life”. In addition, digital saturation, combined with the blurring line between content generated by artificial intelligence and reality, has added another layer of strain, making it harder for people to trust or process any information at all.

In South Africa, the cost of living, widespread corruption and limits to access to healthcare have transformed the concept of fatigue into something almost philosophical: a deep, persistent exhaustion that extends beyond news consumption into the very act of living.

A history of fatigue

In A History of Fatigue: From the Middle Ages to the Present, French historian and sociologist Georges Vigarello argues that our understanding of fatigue as a concept, the words used to describe it and even its symptoms have varied greatly over time, reflecting evolving social conventions.

Vigarello further argues that the ­positing of a more “individualised self” and the expanding ideals of agency and independence have made it more difficult for people in the modern world to handle anything that feels restrictive or limiting. These limitations might include personal financial constraints, limits to self-expression in any form or access to healthcare.

Fatigue is a universally familiar phenomenon. People suddenly or gradually becoming tired, often requiring different kinds of pauses in the form of rest. Over time, there have been several definitions of fatigue, which created a challenge for differentiating fatigue from other constructs like sleeplessness.

In 2025, researchers in the field of phenomenology and cognitive sciences found that some forms of fatigue can settle deeper with “periods of sustained activity or prolonged pressure giving rise to a tiredness that does not dissipate, even after rest”.

Fatigue, or tiredness, is not something we need to “fix”, nor is it a form of burnout that can simply be treated to disappear. Rather, academics argue, extreme states of burnout capture “with eerie precision a state in which our entire being feels scorched, carbonised, consumed by exhaustion”. In this sense, fatigue should be understood not as an isolated condition, but as a symptom of life lived under severe strain, emotional overload or mental illness.

Fatigue and mental health

Historically, studies have shown that fatigue often overlaps with psychiatric disorders. Several studies have concluded that fatigue is a common symptom associated with generalised anxiety disorder and depression.

But new research shows that fatigue can strike independent of a formal psychiatric diagnosis. Tracking more than 5,000 Britons from birth, the study found that 7% of adults develop persistent fatigue without psychiatric illness. Even without a diagnosed disorder, affected individuals experienced increased psychological symptoms, suggesting that fatigue is more than just a symptom – it could be a distinct, clinically significant condition.

What this could mean is that the notion of a certain kind of exhaustion might be understood as a standalone condition, rooted in specific life factors and experiences rather than a side-effect of psychiatric illness.

The weight of our world’s failures, our own unfulfilled choices and the grip of social media and news we can’t fully escape means exhaustion has become a constant companion, shaping how we live.

In addition, contemporary fatigue is also framed as a symptom of today’s “achievement society” where we no longer struggle against imposed discipline, but against ourselves.

It seems we grow tired not only from pushing against the world or meeting the demands of survival at every level of exhaustion. We grow tired most deeply when simply existing starts feeling a bit too heavy, when being ourselves feels like something that must constantly be carried around.

Philosophers and researchers worldwide have invited us to consider fatigue as a sign that it is possible to reach the real limits of being human by simply being too tired. These are not failures of resilience; they are signals to slow down and think carefully about life’s pace and our self-imposed expectations. Not everything can be optimised or endured. Scientific insights suggest some things were never meant to be. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.