Experiences Quitting Twitter

It’s easier than you’d expect

I really love twitter. I’ve met most of my friends through there, including some very dear to me. I can learn a lot from discussions, and it is really cool to just ask people what they think about ideas. It is the most effective tool for self-promotion available. I think I have benefited greatly from using it.

But I also have good reason to dislike twitter. It can be very dumb. It has become tiktokified, with mind-numbing videos being ludicrously popular, and impossible to totally filter out. I find myself sucked into tedious and unproductive arguments with fools, and occasionally have some of my tweets go negatively viral. Above all, I would be spending far too much time on it, when I really should be doing something productive. It felt narcotic — I felt myself craving it. Youtube occupied a similar space for me — I would always have something playing in the background, or while I’m reading someone else.

I wanted to see if I needed it. So, I cut it out of my life entirely. I used an app (blocksite) totally block twitter on everything, and block youtube on my ipad. (Youtube hosts many educational videos, such as MIT Opencourseware, some classes of which I have been working through. If I wanted to watch them, I would have to go on my laptop, and hopefully the ceremony and ritual of doing it on my laptop would keep me focused).

The results have been fantastic. For the first few days, I genuinely craved it, as if I were having withdrawal — there is no other way to describe it. I’d have a tinge of anxiety when I opened my ipad, and realized I couldn’t have it. This did not last, however. After those few days, I found that I no longer particularly desired it at all. I was free — it had lost its hold on me. I have been extraordinarily productive, doing what my higher-order will wants. 

I think cutting things out entirely is the best way to do something. It is like dieting. If you intend merely to cut back a little, you will find it very hard to regulate yourself. Your resolve will flag, and you’ll find it very hard to cut back at all. If you cut entirely, the first couple days will be rough, but you will burst through and no longer desire the thing at all. This tracks with many descriptions of anorexia nervosa, such as this from Scott Alexander. Anorexics, having started on their path for presumably cultural reasons, find themselves genuinely unwilling to return to their prior habits. I am not suggesting that you should become anorexic; but that if you have a habit which you dislike about yourself, you may only need to muster up the will to cut it out entirely for a few days.