1 Lately, I’ve been spending much less time on twitter. Not zero time, but much less than I once did: a total of less than 30 min a week. Here’s a bit of the story >>

2 I stopped using Facebook a couple of years ago. I still have an account, but I log in fewer than 5 times a year, and never post. I already used twitter when I dropped Facebook, but when I dropped Facebook, my twitter usage went way up.

3 Not too long ago, twitter was a default tab in my browser. I switched to the tab several times a day, especially outside core working hours. Twitter was my first alert system for news, especially tech and political news.

4 I have met people that I value through twitter. I have hired people from twitter. I have had interesting conversations and I have sometimes heard perspectives I wasn’t hearing in too many other places.

5 I found a voice and a platform for expression on twitter. I found the platform to be a good place to try out ideas that I was still working out. Twitter gives fast signal on what resonates for others, a lightweight way to share a point of view.

6 I liked the constraints of the platform. I liked character limits. I liked that I could go read what someone is saying from time to time even if I did not follow them and they are not a regular part of my feed.

7 I still like these things to a large extent. After all, I chose to write this point of view itself on twitter! But over the last several months, my point of view has changed in a way that I think has been uniquely influenced by 2020.

8 When we began pandemic lockdown, I found twitter comforting: a way to connect when I was feeling isolated. This led me to spend more time on the platform, especially outside of core working hours. Including at night when I couldn’t sleep.

9 As we moved through the year, I was struck by how I was looking to feel connection on the platform without actually connecting very often. The time I spent connecting with people meaningfully was eclipsed by the time I spent *looking for* connection.

10 This is a very personal thing. For the connection I needed, the way I was spending my time was increasingly not providing it. Your mileage on this may and will vary; this is a statement about me, not about anyone else.

11 Similarly, I started reassessing twitter as a platform for action. It was easy for me to feel like I was *doing* something when I was *tweeting* something. But upon reflection, I could see that this was not really the case.

12 Where I had once looked forward to perusing twitter, I found myself ambivalent at best. Sometimes I found that it caused me stress in ways I could not parse while it was happening. I wouldn’t have to be reading anything specifically stressful to feel stressed on twitter.

13 I started making intentional choices to seek both connection and action elsewhere. Sometimes in other online forums (for professional forums, typically company-internal ones). Much more often offline; for personal connection, always offline.

14 The shift has meant more time with my family. In terms of hours spent, but also attention and energy given. It has meant more time on the important parts of my job. It has meant more intentional consumption of news. It has meant more intentional social action.

15 I would have said before that I gave plenty of attention to all those things (family, job, news, action). But it feels different than it did 3-4 months ago.

16 There is an aspect that is sheer hours spent; my after-work hours used to include a lot of twitter, and have basically none now.

17 But it goes beyond that. Dropping my doom-scrolling habit has distinctly made me feel happier, more resilient, and more connected to the people around me. I had not realized the toll it was taking, but in retrospect, it was significant.

18 Today I can peruse twitter without feeling the spike in connection-seeking anxiety that it sometimes caused me in the past. That makes me more able to simply scroll without it feeling like a doom-scroll. I can again appreciate the platform for what it is good at.

19 But the truth is, twitter is just not on my mind the way it used to be. So while I can consume twitter without stress again, it only rarely occurs to me to do so.

20 I don’t know if this is relevant to anyone other than me. I’m sharing it just as a personal journey on the off chance that it helps others who may be feeling twitter-stress without exactly knowing why.

Heading for a lunchtime walk now!