After 7 months on a strict Twitter diet, I feel healthy

Seven months ago, with the first rumblings that Elon Musk might buy Twitter, I made the decision to pull back from the site, and use it only to alert people to things like publication of my column or my TV appearances.

I stopped checking every day. I stopped publishing original thoughts there. I stopped responding to other accounts. Twitter went from an integral part of my life to a tool I hardly used.

Now that Twitter is teetering, it seems worthwhile to let my readers know what walking away has been like. Cutting back on Twitter changed my life ... for the better.

It took weeks for me to stop worrying I was missing out on “the conversation,” thinking I had irrationally removed myself from “the town square.” These were, in fact, classic withdrawal symptoms. I had been addicted.

At first, when I had thoughts about news I read or saw, it was hard not to immediately share those thoughts. But, as the weeks wore on, the wisdom of not sharing became increasingly clear.

Sitting with a thought, as thinkers have throughout human history, has its merits. The thought grows, is pruned, is shaped and sharpened.

Also, most of the trouble I have ever created for myself as a professional, I did by tweeting something that was ill considered or ill expressed in the heat of the moment.

So removing myself has been one of the smartest and healthiest things I’ve ever done.

Social media companies turned us all into an unpaid workforce, willingly producing free content because of our desperation to be seen, heard and liked. And for the social media companies, all this content was a product alongside which ads could be sold and personal data could be mined.

Insecurity was monetized. Narcissism became a commodity. If you weren’t creating content, were you truly living? If you hadn’t become a photographer, videographer, orator and comedian, what were you doing with your life?

And so, social media became a collection of highlight reels, an opportunity to chase an idealized version of life that was a fraction of reality at best and a false reality at worst.

I had to change my relationship to social media to make it less consuming. I had a real life to live in the real world. Doing it had to be more important than documenting it.

The simple rules I gave myself back in April were these: First, other than alerting people to columns and appearances, I would limit my social media usage to a single app. For me, that was Instagram, in part because it’s the app on which I had the fewest followers. I also liked the way I could limit abusive and hateful interactions.

Second, I would share actual things that I had done in the real world. I still posted a joke or commentary or moment of fun here and there. But I was OK with that because my overall volume of posting was so greatly reduced. I looked at the occasional pointless post much the same as I would a diet cheat day..

I think the apps are great for performers. They have given a stage to many who would otherwise not have had one. But we have to remove the expectation we should all be performers.

I don’t know if Twitter will survive the Musk era, and the turmoil at the company does not concern me.

What I wanted to share with you was that you don’t need Twitter — or any social media — nearly as much as you think you do. In fact, your life would likely feel much fuller if you too went on a strict Twitter diet.

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Paul Krugman Mary Sanchez Clarence Page Michelle Goldberg E. J. Dionne Jr.

Gail Collins Leonard Pitts