My husband decided to take a month off social media. He's doing it for research, to see what it's like to be switched off. It was an interesting idea and made me think pretty hard about how much I check twitter, and what a big part of my social connection comes from twitter. I figured it wouldn't do me any harm to disconnect from that for a month.
For the month of March I've turned twitter off.
It, three days in, has been an incredibly strange experience. So strange that I don't know if I'll make it the entire month.
I have come to realise that I get all my news from twitter. All of it. It is the first thing I read in the morning. Things my friends are doing, news articles, all of it comes from that first 5 minute read the second I wake up.
It feels like I'm disconnected from everything without having that link to twitter. And this disconnection comes despite still having that social connection via Instagram and Facebook.
I have trouble reconciling the idea that this 140 character link has become such a defining part of my daily experience. I check twitter at least once an hour via my phone, and when at home it is always on. Sitting on the couch I surf via my iPad, but I can always see my computer with twitter feed open to be able to glance and see what is going on. My computer almost feels like it has no value without having a twitter feed always on display (almost, I use my computer for work daily).
With my limited three day experience I am fascinated to see where this goes. I almost feel less tense, more relaxed, without that constant feed of information, but I also feel weirdly almost anxious, but not quite, that I have no idea what's going on in the world. I know I could get the information if I wanted, but I don't really want to.
I'm very conflicted about this, and that's surely to get more confusing as time goes on.
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