Five days without Twitter

It’s finally 2017. This is the year I’ll attend my last prom, walk on senior night, graduate high school, and attend college for the first time. Now that the class of 2017 is nearing the final stretch of the year, the hardest part of our 13 years in schooling arise. As I enter this challenging part in my life, I decided I wanted to challenge myself personally even more. For this column, I will try to go to five days without something I am dependent on every week.

Five days without twitter. First of all I would like to say, I tried really hard to go five days without twitter but only made it to the end of the third day. According to statisca.com, at the end of 2016, 317 million people were using twitter every month.

When I originally made my account, I never realized it was something I would grow so dependant on. So when I came up with the “five days without” challenge, I knew this would be perfect.

Twitter has become a place where teenagers and adults alike go to voice their opinions and grow a platform represent themselves. Whether this platform is centered around puppy pictures or political talk, everyone gets a feel of how you live your life when you use this app.

But how much is too much? There has been many times in my life where I wondered if twitter was the cause of stress, anxiety, and worry in my life. I can say that without a doubt, with being off twitter for just two days, I could definitely tell the difference. I wasn’t up to date on the constant drama of who was tweeting about their “oomf” or what someone had for lunch; I wasn’t following the constant tweets of Donald Trump or seeing who was subtweeting one of their exes, and I realized that sometimes it is very healthy to take a break, take a breathe, and relax.

With that being said, I could tell that I was beginning to miss this app when I thought of something I wanted to share or saw something I wanted to react to, and I had nowhere to go. Young people are so quick to share every single opinion we have on social media, that we grow so used to having this option. I found myself wanting to text my friends about things that I would usually tweet about. It made me think about what people did with their opinions or reactions before twitter and I realized that they just kept it to themselves. It is so great that people have the opportunity to take a stand for a good cause or get something off their chest. Although there are many positives to life on Twitter, there are many downfalls as well. Many people have grown up with the false confidence of speaking behind a screen and then being unable to put their words into actions. Regardless of this, social media continues to grow rapidly with every passing day.

Overall, I have realized that there are both good and bad things that come with using Twitter. Although it can be used in a positive way, to put your thoughts out for everyone to see, some abuse this power. It is healthy to take a break from social media for a few days and can have many positive effects on you. Going without this app, even for a few days, really showed me how close we have come with social media and how much we depend on it in our everyday lives.