Last week I took a break from Twitter and I actually found it really helpful. I wanted to talk about it briefly on my blog as I thought it could actually be interesting to some of you who have considered doing the same.
Twitter is by far the social media platform that I use the most. It’s driven by conversation and the character limitations make it easy and (for the most part) pleasant to engage with people in my community about shared interests like mental health, self care and art. I also really like how easy it is to reply to someone with a photo; it makes requesting pet pics a dream on a bad day.
I’ve taken breaks from Twitter before, of course, but never quite like this one. In the past my Twitter breaks have been a result of mental health crisis, burnout or online bullying. This is the first time I’ve actually proactively taken a break as a preventative measure in order to keep my mental health on an even keel and it really worked.
I use social media for work opportunities as well as for social purposes, so it can sometimes feel like taking a break really isn’t an option but actually taking a break helped me with multiple things including being able to focus on my work. It was so beneficial actually that I think I might do it again in the future or even make it a regular thing. We’ll see!
Why I took some time away from Twitter
I actually decided to take some time off Twitter because I was spending far too much time on it. I’ve always relied on Twitter as a way to connect with the mental health community and to build peer support relationships as well as finding it an important source of news and information. Sometimes I catch myself using it a little bit too much during extra stressful times and recently I found that I was losing a lot of time to Twitter, especially in the mornings and it was eating into the time I wanted to spend on other important things like my art.
It’s only now that I’m writing this that I’ve realised that this coincided entirely with my therapist taking a month long break to visit her home country. In her absence, I think I leaned into the community support more and more, which is fine but it became habit to log on and scroll even when I wasn’t actually engaging with others.
Social media works best for us (generally, I mean, but this is also definitely the case for me) when we’re sharing and engaging with others. It’s usually most damaging and negative when we’re lurking and scrolling as it perpetuates loneliness. There are other ways it can cause damage of course but I felt my levels of loneliness build over the last few weeks every time I logged on.
I also really wanted to write and make art but would find myself losing 2-3 hours every morning to Twitter and that would eat into precious time that I wanted to spend creatively.
So I decided to take a break.
The rules I set for my Twitter break
If I’m honest, I didn’t really make any rules. I shared the fact I was taking a short break, but that was purely so that people wouldn’t worry about me while I was gone. I didn’t even know how long I’d be away when I did but I think it ended up being around 5 days.
I did actually log in a couple of times over those days but, as I had far fewer DMs and notifications to check than usual, I spent much less time on the app. I also reminded myself I was taking a break and this stopped me from wasting additional time scrolling. The fact I had told people I was taking a break gave me the permission to ignore notifications and topics that I would usually interact with. It was refreshing.
What I did in my days away from Twitter
Well, I actually made some art, which made the break pretty rewarding as it was the intended consequence of my break and I achieved it. It was also useful because I am planning to sell some of my art when I launch my new business, Hello Pumpkin, next month. Selling stock is much easier if that stock actually exists!
I got up earlier without the morning temptation to scroll and I also was able to focus on spending time decorating the house with my dog and partner over the weekend with minimal distraction.
Unexpected benefits of taking a break
While I am actually so surprised that I benefitted in some of the ways I planned to (is anyone actually surprised when things go as planned and aren’t just total chaos??), there were benefits I hadn’t expected at all. One of these was the huge amounts of relief I felt at not having to engage with current affairs.
Those of us who spend a lot of time on social media are exposed to constant trending news stories that are often stressful and scary. There’s a temptation to engage with every single thing we see being talked about in our community and I didn’t realise how bloody exhausting it all is until I consciously switched off from it. I think it really allowed me to remind myself of the reasons I’m on social media and what I actually want to use it for.
I love connecting with people who have similar experiences to me of mental illness and living with anxiety, PTSD and agoraphobia and I’ve made some very close friends through opening up about my mental health as well as being an abuse survivor. That’s the most valuable part of social media for me – the “social” bit. Of course, I am also interested in other topics like art, pets, home renovation, cottagecore aesthetics and folklore. I love finding people with shared interests and hobbies and I love seeing other people’s success.
I also like learning about important topics on social media. Gaining the perspective and knowledge from people I wouldn’t necessarily have encountered in my daily life in a small North Wales town has been such an incredible privilege. This is especially true when it comes to topics that centre around other cultures, environmental issues, racism and neurodivergence.
I could honestly do without the other sides of social media. I know that the news cycle can prompt important discussions but I could have really done without a lot of the last few months of news.
I’m living with a condition that specifically increases my stress levels and makes life so much harder. The added stress of the Depp v Heard court case was so unnecessarily damaging to me. And some of these things we can mute because we can see them coming, but some of them pop up out of the blue. Who expected to log on today and see Nuclear War trending? And all these subjects bring such a huge wave of anxiety and worry that we have to pile onto our growing list of problems and yet most of us can do absolutely nothing about it.
I actually still had a lot of anxiety while I was on my twitter break. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise. My anxiety isn’t rooted in the news cycle but it is perpetuated by it. It did bring me a surprising layer of peace to wrap myself up in though. Having a break allowed me to feel some buried feelings about stuff that’s actually personal to me and that I have some influence over. It allowed me some time to figure my own shit out and drown out some of the noise of the world for a minute.
Coming back to Twitter after the break
I came back to Twitter because I missed my community. I came back on a day when I needed a little bit of extra input and support from the kindest people I know. And it felt good.
Coming back to Twitter after a few days away felt like getting to hug a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while. I appreciate it all the more now because I’ve spent some time really really alone without the constant stimulation and feedback that Twitter provides.
And the weird thing is, despite the benefits, I definitely still feel like Twitter brings more good to my life than it does bad. But I’ve learned some things about how and why I want to use social media that I wouldn’t have without that little bit of space.
I’m @pigletish on Twitter btw, just in case you wanted to send me some photos of your fur babies. See you there!
