Twitter is a great means of communicating with other people, so let’s get that out of the way first it is not without value. Unfortunately Twitter has devolved into a running gun battle of shouting, negativity and mental anguish. You really don’t have to go for into the twitter verse to see it either. Maybe you don’t use Twitter, then disregard. If you do use Twitter then you know exactly what I mean. If you suffer from anxiety and use twitter? You’re a glutton for punishment I guess.
Here is a quick synopsis of what a normal day on twitter is like:
Random Twitter user: “I had a great Orange today, I prefer Oranges over Apples”
5-10 Random Twitter users reply: “So what your saying is you hate Apples…. You are a racist/every other ist they can think of”
Random Twitter user replies: “I didn’t say I hate Apples, I said I prefer Oranges over them”
5-10 Random Twitter users reply: “It’s the same thing, you can’t hide your “ist” we know who you are and we know what you stand for”
Meantime the peanut gallery shows up. Hundreds of replies later lines are drawn, you are either for Apples or against. Names have been called, threats have been made, tears have been shed, and yelling has occurred, anger is abound.
You? You’ve lost your appetite and will likely not eat an orange again and your anxiety is off the charts. Why? Because you prefer oranges over apples.
Perhaps you use Twitter for affirmation, perhaps for you it’s a comfortable environment because you happen to fall in line with the current popular narrative. That’s fine for you, remember every time you pile on, someone else is on the other side of the screen. You might be contributing to their declining mental health, conversely they may be contributing to your declining mental health by disagreeing with you.
At the end of the day all of us who have some form of Anxiety have to take hard looks at what is contributing to our condition. Twitter is a cesspool of negativity and an echo chamber. It’s a constant drumbeat of self-righteousness and that can be extremely exhausting. Anxiety is horrible and Twitter is making it worse for you. If you continue to engage in Twitter you are ensuring that anxiety thrives, stop enabling your anxiety and shut twitter off.
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Twitter is honestly such a toxic platform. You literally can not win on it so I don’t even look through it anymore. I just post my stuff automatically through WP, reply to anyone who replies to me and that’s about it.
That’s exactly what I do too, directly through WordPress. I do use it to get notifications from other people platforms like YouTube and someone has a video up that I want to see. Otherwise it’s just too toxic particularly now that we’re in a political season.
Yeah that makes sense. I made the mistake of seeing the trending topics one time and it was awful.
I realized how dangerous Twitter could be for my mental health a long time ago. I felt so much better when I got rid of my account. You illustrated it perfectly. A simple thought can turn into name calling and mental anguish. Because they are behind keyboards and phones and cannot physically see how their words affect others, they hold nothing back in trying to be as mean as possible. It’s way more meaningful to spend time with actual friends and leave the hateful speech to the other twitter users.
“I do not associate with deceitful men, And I avoid those who hide what they are.” (Psalms 26:4)
Well said. The internet has been a blessing and a curse. Its empowered all sorts of unbecoming behavior from what would normally be decent people. Thank you for stopping by.