I’ve been a Twitter user since June 2006, apparently, and in that time there have been very few days where I haven’t been on it. It’s been a major source of both information, news and entertainment for me for over a decade.
I’m probably not your typical Twitter user, either. For a start, I generally don’t use the official Twitter app; instead, I prefer Tweetbot, a third-party client which had a ‘mute’ filter long before it became available to all Twitter users. And, barring tweets that I’ve muted, I try to read every tweet on my timeline; Tweetbot even remembers my ‘position’ in the timeline and synchronises this between devices. Typically, I would read about 500 tweets per day.
Reading tweets would start at breakfast (which is about 6:30am for me), with catch-ups at lunchtime, whilst commuting on the train, and before bed. In all, I would typically spend over an hour every day reading tweets.
It’s when I have spelt it out like this that I realise that my relationship with Twitter wasn’t really a healthy one. I had a hunch that I was probably spending too much time on Twitter, but, I found it entertaining and enlightening and it was a good way of passing the time.
Until it wasn’t.
I know I’m not the only person who was very disappointed with the outcome of the UK’s general election last month. But as a remain-supporting Labour Party member, it was pretty devastating. And when I woke up to hundreds of tweets on my timeline on Friday 13th December, I just couldn’t face looking at them.
So, I basically quit Twitter. Not completely – I haven’t deleted my account, and I’ve still posted quite a few tweets in the month since then. But you may have noticed fewer retweets and replies, and far fewer ‘liked’ tweets by others. I’m allowing myself up to 5 minutes on Twitter, no more than twice a day, to read other people’s tweets.
And so far, it seems to be going okay. I’m not really missing it as much as I thought I would. I am, perhaps, spending a bit more time on Facebook instead, but Facebook is generally full of closer friends and people that I care about, rather than random internet people.
The time that I used to spend on Twitter is now available for other things. I’ve been a major user of the ‘read it later’ service Pocket, which I use to save interesting links to read later. By December, this inbox of unread links had hit 250 – and some of those articles were hour-long reads. As I write, it’s 33, and I’m hoping it’ll be 0 very soon. It hasn’t been 0 since 2018. Of course, many of these ‘interesting links’ were saved from Twitter, and so I have saved very few new links to read in recent weeks.
Once my reading list in Pocket is clear, I’m planning to tackle a different reading list: books. Most of the books that I ‘read’ are audiobooks – indeed, last year I only finished one printed book whilst on holiday. I started the e-book of Mark Watson’s ‘Eleven’ last January and then made no progress in the subsequent 12 months. All the while, piles – both actual and virtual – of unread books have been accumulating, and it’s about time that I actually read them. I’ve set myself a stretch target of 50 books on this year’s Goodreads Reading Challenge – that’s almost a book a week. So far, I’ve finished 2 audiobooks, although one was started in 2019 and the other was a relatively short book that I powered through on a couple of long car journeys at new year. Still, I’m on target.
I’m also trying to spend more quality time with my daughter. She has recently turned 4, and wants me to play with her more. Not needing to get one last fix of Twitter before bed has given me more opportunities to read books with her at bedtime, and I’m hoping that I can be more present with her.
The timing of this change is interesting, as it comes roughly at the start of a new year and new decade. I wouldn’t call giving up Twitter a ‘new year’s resolution’ – mainly because I made the resolution two weeks before the start of the new year. But it’s something I’m hoping to stick to as the year goes on.
When you walk past gambling shops, there’s usually a yellow sign in the window saying ‘When the fun stops, stop’. I think the fun stopped with Twitter some time ago and it’s taken me some time to realise.
