Do You Have Streak Stress?

If so, there are three things you should know: It’s real. You’re not alone. There are ways to deal.

- Andrea Stanley

The ritual went like this: Emma Sklar would get up at 6:30 A.M. and focus on choosing an outfit that would look “cute” or “good enough” for a streak. By 8 A.M., she was in the car on the way to school. She would spend the 35-minute ride debating whether to send a selfie (“If I got the perfect photo earlier,” she says) or a blank screen to a bunch of friends on Snapchat. Once she made her decision, she would spend the majority of the drive editing the pic and sending it out to her streaks . . . all 173 of them. “Once my process was done, I’d feel so relieved—at least until I realized I’d have to do it all again in 12 hours when it was time to send my ‘good night’ streaks,” says Emma, who lives in Los Angeles. She kept it up for three years.

“When I started, I only had seven streaks going, and it was fun,” Emma says. “But over time, the number grew, and it became this obsessive habit that felt like a burden. There were more important things I should have been worried about, like homework, tests, and swim team.”