I’m leaving the tweetosphere to others from now on

I’M on a break. Not a mini-break or a city break or anything remotely fun like that, but a Twitter break. Yes a break from Twitter, and in fact all social media. In modern day newsrooms this sort of decision is quite likely to be seen as heresy. Social media is quite the thing. It is a great source of content and an even better way of getting content in front of bigger audiences. All of our newsrooms employ social media experts, and most of our journalists are experts in social media. But just for now I have had enough. I was a late entrant to the social media world, and was firmly in the “Why would I want to see a picture of what Nick and Tessa had for dinner” school of thought when the only things people posted on social media was what they had had for dinner. For years I had a

Facebook account with no profile picture which I never used, and only got a Twitter account when someone important from the Marketing Department told me to because it was important. It was a revelation. It was an easy way to get the news, a brilliant way to follow sport and a good way of communicating. I was a convert, and for years checking Twitter in the morning became my first port of call. I stopped listening to the radio news, the television was switched off.

Communicating with teenage children – even those sitting in the next door room – is only possible through social media messaging, so that drew me in and then my discovery of chat groups sucked me in further. What’s not to like? Thousands of people as obsessed with cricket as me in a group chatting about cricket. Jackpot! My screen time grew and grew, social media began to replace all other media, and as I disappeared further into the wormhole, along came Brexit, and Trump, and Corbyn and then coronavirus. That lot mixed with the arrival of millions more users saw social media get nasty. Debate has given away to hysteria. I am all for freedom of speech and everybody’s right to express an opinion, but one thing I have become absolutely sure of is that I don’t want to have to listen to all of them. Spend too much time on social media and you would be forgiven for thinking that the world is full of smug, ignorant, bigoted, racist, horrible, angry people. The trouble with that is whenever I go outside and see people (admittedly not very often at the moment) I realise the world is full of quite the opposite. Even in the cricket forums people end up screaming at each other over whether Jimmy Anderson is too old and over the hill or one of the best there’s ever been – and that sort of vehemence is not cricket to me. If you want to depress yourself this morning look at the ‘debate’ that has been going on on social media over the fabulous new Antony Gormley statue in Plymouth. Now, I get the fact that the iron human might not be to everyone’s taste, but deary me. Mrs Martin left the Tweetosphere some months ago, and she seems fine and reports that she has missed nothing. Match that with my realisation that I am now more interested in pictures of what people I know had for dinner than I am in people I don’t know’s opinions of Rishi Sunak and my mind is made up. I’m taking a break. I shall spend less time hunched over my phone and more time reading papers, books and listening to the radio. ‘Call me Dave’ Cameron was bang on when he said Britain and Twitter are not the same thing, and thank goodness for that. I only ever posted pictures of sunsets and dogs. Now I’m not sure I can even be bothered to do that.